


Hellish Hound

by 7PercentSolution



Series: Fallen Angel [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autistic Sherlock, Case Fic, Drugs, Gen, Meltdown, sensory processing disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6383419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7PercentSolution/pseuds/7PercentSolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pushed to the edge by Mycroft's interference, Sherlock takes a case to get out of London. On the wilds of Dartmoor, he comes face-to-face with just what his plan to take on Moriarty will cost him. Still being kept in the dark, John's patience is tested to the limit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Well, that was tedious."

When John looked up from his chair where he was reading the newspaper, he was greeted by the sight of a blood-splattered consulting detective wielding a harpoon. Fortunately for his nerves, he knew that the blood was most likely to be from the swine that had been Sherlock's "date" at Smithfield meat market. And he had been warned about the harpoon. When the doctor turned on his phone after an early breakfast in a flat conspicuously empty of his flatmate, it had been to see a text:  **8.17am London Underground + harpoon at rush hour = not amused. SH**

"You went on the Tube like that?!"

"None of the cabs would take me." This was uttered through gritted teeth, and then Sherlock was gone, down the hall, presumably to take a shower and change. John was both relieved that there were no apparent signs of drug use, and perturbed at the obviously bloody work that had served as a distraction. But, he breathed a sigh of relief that Sherlock had not been arrested by the Transport police and taken off for mental evaluation somewhere. It was a testament to the Tube's hard-core commuters that Sherlock must have simply been given space and ignored.

oOo

Less than twenty four hours later, John was sitting across from that same consulting detective, now on the Great Western train leaving Paddington Station at 10.16 am on its way to Plymouth. From there, the plan was to hire a car and drive to the western side of Dartmoor. Their new client, Henry Knight, had been and gone the day before, taking with him an assurance that the two of them would be arriving the next day. Sherlock had been happy enough to take the case in the end, despite his initial reluctance, but he would not explain his change of heart to John.

John had watched his friend's bizarre behaviour during the interview with increasing disquiet. Sherlock's normal rudeness and abrupt manner occasionally tipped over into eccentricity with clients, but the meeting with Henry Knight had taken it to new heights of peculiarity. From the insistence that the young man smoke, and then the intrusion into his physical space in order to inhale it himself, through to the obviously dismissive rejection of the man's trauma as a child, it was as if Sherlock was cramming every objectionable aspect of his sociopathic tendencies into a single exchange. It was a testament to Henry Knight's desperation that he was willing to tolerate such oddities, and to Sherlock's ability to use his deductive powers to impress a disbelieving client.  _Showing off- it's what he does._

For the rest of the day after the client left, Sherlock buried himself in writing up the Peter Carey case on his blog, and to drafting an article for The Journal of Homicide Studies, which was running a special issue on forensic archaeology. "One thing at a time, John; I have to put this one to bed before taking up Knight's case."

"So, who did it, if not the bloke who was hanged for it a hundred years ago?" John was about to get dressed to go to work.

"Patrick Cairns."

"Am I supposed to be any the wiser for knowing that name?"

Sherlock huffed. "The idiot defending Neligan should have been wiser, that's for sure. There were at least three possible suspects who were more likely to have committed the deed, but he never bothered to even try to argue that there was reasonable doubt. It was a deplorable case of police ineptitude, too. They should have known that a man as short as you are, and slighter of build, could never have wielded the harpoon with sufficient force to drive it straight through him and into the wooden wall behind him. Even I had difficulties, and I am at least seven inches taller than Neligan. The crime could only have been done by someone over six foot. Add to that the fact that the harpoon is a difficult weapon to wield with any precision, and the police should have known that the murderer was a whaler, most probably one who had served with Carey. Ship records of the crew identified only one such candidate, and Patrick Cairns fit the bill perfectly, especially when he mysteriously retired from his sea life with a tidy sum that he claimed had come from an inheritance. The real murderer got away with it and let an innocent man go to the gallows."

"And you got all that from a bit of pig sticking and archive research?"

"Yes, John. Half a day's work. Almost not worth it, except for the pleasure of telling Neligan's descendants that their ancestor, of whom they have been ashamed for the past century, was in fact as much a victim of Carey's murderer as the sea captain himself."

As an alternative to smoking, taking drugs, shooting holes in the wall or generally shouting " _BORED!_ " at the top of his lungs, solving an historical injustice had a lot of advantages. John went off happier to do his afternoon shift, and to tell them that he would not be available for a few days. maybe even a whole week.

The practice manager shrugged her shoulders. "Apart from sudden shift changes to accommodate your flatmate's demands, you're a locum who never takes any holiday, Doctor Watson; I can't really complain when you decide to do so now. Dartmoor is beautiful at this time of the year." She loaned him a guidebook. "Took a holiday to Widecombe-in-the-Moor last year, had a fabulous time with the kids there. Enjoy."

On his way home at 7.45pm, walking to the underground station he soon realised that there was a black car following him. He sighed. He had wondered how long it would take before Mycroft pulled a stunt like this. For a moment, he imagined what would happen if he just scarpered the last 300 meters to the underground station. Would one of the minions try a flying tackle? Or would the car just drive onto Baker Street and wait there, knowing that he would show up sooner or later? If John was less tired, he might have some fun winding up Mycroft.

But then he realised that this just might be an opportunity to find out more about what was going on between the two brothers. Given that Sherlock was being silent on the topic, perhaps Mycroft might reveal more. It was worth a try. John did not like being left out of the discussion- especially when it seemed to have taken such a toxic turn in terms of relations between the brothers. That made him stop his forward momentum and turn resolutely around.

Three quick strides later, he opened the back door and threw himself in, even before the car had come to a complete halt.

"Well, that was dramatic, Doctor Watson."

John was expecting a comment from Mycroft's dark haired PA, but this was uttered by the man himself.

"Mycroft. Well, if it isn't the devil himself, instead of one of his minions."

The elder Holmes's face betrayed no reaction to the flippant remark. "This seemed a more convenient method of talking. For obvious reasons, I would rather avoid another scene at Baker Street."

"I do have a phone, you know. A  _phone_ \- I have told you about that remarkable communication device on numerous occasions."

That earned him a look of forensic scrutiny. "Non-verbal communication is just so much more revealing, don't you think?" There was an undercurrent of smugness that John found more than a little annoying.

"So, what do you want to talk about, Mycroft?"

"Is he using drugs again? I see you feel able to let him wander about London unsupervised at the crack of dawn this morning- rather  _unwise_  in his current state of fragmentation, don't you think?"

John was torn. Should he react to the idea that Mycroft was proposing that John was some sort of 'watchdog' to be ensuring his brother's sobriety, or should he instead focus on the fact that, if anyone was to blame for Sherlock's current frame of mind, it was his brother? He opted for the latter.

"Is this an admission that you are not the omnipotent, all-seeing, all-knowing big brother? If you have to ask me, then you need to train your surveillance team better. Surely, they have told you he's clean. I also suspect that they will have told you about the arrangements that have been put into place to ensure that he doesn't succumb to temptation. Oh, before you think that was someone else's idea- don't. It was his." John looked out of the window at the passing traffic for a moment, before continuing. "On the other hand, that fact must be galling for you, as you seem determined to drive him to utter distraction, by interfering with case work. He doesn't need to self-sabotage; he's got you to do that for him." The doctor did nothing to remove the hostility from his words.

"You know  _nothing_  of what is at stake here. For his own protection, my brother needs to be reminded of his limitations, before they have devastating consequences."

John turned to stare wide-eyed at Mycroft. "Then enlighten me. If you think that Sherlock is doing something that is too risky, then you have to tell me what is going on."

That earned him one of Mycroft's special little smiles. "So, he hasn't made you his  _confidant_." The suited man looked almost gleeful at this revelation. "Well, far be it from me to interfere between you two. Alas, I won't be able to let you in on the details. All you need to know is that Sherlock risks destroying himself and everything that matters to him if you don't manage to talk him out of this crazy scheme of his."

John was reminded of the tiger he had once seen as a child in Bristol's zoo. The beast had sat in arrogant splendour, looking at the people looking at it, with disdain and utter superiority. Mycroft's eyes had that same combination in them. John was forced to look away, out the window, trying to calculate how far they were from Baker Street, and whether there was a convenient tube station. He flexed the fingers of his left hand.

"You'd better let me out on the corner, Mycroft. I think we are done here."

That was met with a raised eyebrow, but the older man did tap a button by the side door- presumably an intercom to the driver. "You can stop at the next set of traffic lights, Johnson. It would appear that the doctor has decided to make his own way back to Baker Street."

As the black car pulled away, leaving John on the pavement, he fervently hoped that the elder Holmes was wrong about his younger brother. He really, really didn't like secrets being kept from him.  _Just how the hell am I supposed to help Sherlock, when I don't know what I am protecting him from?_  Not for the first time, the doctor regretted being forced to play piggy in the middle between the two warring brothers.  _Just hope I don't end up harpooned._


	2. Chapter 2

John opened the borrowed guide book as the train stuttered its way out of Paddington Station. He'd never been southwest of Exeter- and there only on a night time Army exercise in Haldon Hill Forest. On the extreme western edge of Devon, across the Tamar River from Cornwall, Dartmoor was an unknown for him. He found himself wondering why Sherlock had been willing to take the case on, given his initial rejection of it. The doctor had not known Sherlock to take many cases that involved travel outside the familiar surroundings of London and the Home counties. Sherlock's overseas work tended to be short cases involving art, missing persons or the occasional robbery, if it was interesting enough- and most of those involved a major city. To get him out of his familiar territory into the countryside, the cases needed to be an 8 or 9 on the Sherlockian scale- interesting enough to overcome the inevitable discomfort caused by strange environments, unfamiliar people and unexpected social stresses. He recalled all too often the fact that he'd been the one sent out to investigate the death of the hiker in the field. Even after he'd said yes to this new case, Sherlock's first reaction was to send John to Devon, rather than go himself. John wondered if this case might push Sherlock too far at a time when he was already under considerable pressure.  _I really don't know which is worse- no case at all, or one that hits all the wrong buttons?_

As their train rattled through Ealing and then on through Staines, John got stuck into the folklore section of the guide book. The taller man had insisted on first class tickets and then on taking the seat facing away from the direction of travel. Once ensconced across from John, Sherlock opened his laptop and plugged into the train's Wi-Fi, muttering that it was a "great improvement when trains joined the modern world." After that, he buried himself in internet research of some sort, ignoring John's occasional questions about what he was working on. While this was more or less what John expected of his colleague on a train, he could not help but notice that Sherlock's left leg was jiggling. When his hands were not busy typing on the laptop or swiping through pages on his phone, they seemed to have a life of their own- restlessly moving from massaging a thigh, to rubbing the thumb and index finger together or twiddling with a dark curl. Nicotine withdrawal and possible cravings for other substances were clearly at work. He decided a bit of distraction therapy might help.

"Sherlock, do you know much about Dartmoor?"

"Hmmm?...no, too boring."

"Well, Henry Knight's story about that monstrous hound has some historical precedents. It says here that Squire Cabell, 'a man with an evil reputation', terrorised the local neighbourhood and when he died in the late seventeenth century, a pack of black hounds ran howling across Dartmoor. His body was entombed in a building to stop him from riding out with his hounds."

Sherlock snorted in derision. "Somehow, I don't think they're still running three centuries later, John."

The doctor looked crossly at his travelling companion. "I didn't mean that, you berk. It's just that, subliminally, Henry could have picked up on the idea when he was a child at school. And here's another one. Henry mentioned Dewer's Hollow. Well, it turns out that there is also something called the Dewer's Stone." He read from the guidebook, "a large granite outcrop over a hundred meters high", before going on to read out loud that "local legend says that the devil terrorises the moor at night with a pack of something called the Wistmans Wood hounds, which chase travellers to their deaths off the top of the Dewerstone."

That earned him another, even louder, snort of derision from Sherlock. "That's just the sort of drivel that gets promoted by guidebooks like that one; all good for the tourist trade. The same sort of macbre nonsense as "ripper tours" in Limehouse or stories of ghosts and ghouls walking the alleyways of Covent Garden. Like that silly TV programme about the Hound- all just stories manufactured to attract the gullible."

As more passengers got onto the train at Reading, the consulting detective sighed and pulled out a pair of earbuds and plugged himself in, to drown out the sound of chatter and conversation. Whatever he was listening to kept his attention for a little while, but the jiggling and the fidgeting did not stop. At one point, Sherlock just ripped the earphones out and stood up, announcing crossly that he needed to go for a walk. He disappeared down the train carriage, with John's concerned eyes following him. The doctor felt awkward; Sherlock's comment to Mrs Hudson yesterday was still ringing in his ears- "I need something stronger than tea. Seven per cent stronger." Still, it was unlikely that Sherlock would find a dealer on the train, and smoking was banned in public transport. Making a fuss about it would only irritate Sherlock even more.

He returned a quarter of an hour later carrying two coffees.

"Ta- just what the doctor would have ordered, if you had bothered to ask….although I'm not sure if  _you_  need a stimulant. Is yours decaffeinated?"

That earned him a glower. "You deprive me of nicotine, John. That is enough torture."

John sat back and enjoyed the view, as the scenery of southwest England rolled by. They crossed into the county of Devon soon after Taunton, and John read in the guidebook about the Black Down hills and the tourist sites of East Devon. Then the train stopped at Exeter St David's station. This one John knew- his training exercise involved a pick up here, with the convoy of army trucks then wending their way up the steep incline of Haldon Hill, past the race course and then off on tiny lanes through the forest. He remembered it as one of the first times in his life he'd been truly and utterly soaked to the skin for more than three days without a chance to dry off. He'd had a wonderful time. It had poured with rain, but not dampened his enthusiasm for practicing his medicine in the army.

As the train left Exeter, it took a different route, away from the hills, crossing the River Exe and then hugging the side of the estuary until breaking out to the sea at Dawlish. Remarkably, the train tracks ran right alongside the beach for almost a mile, before diving into a tunnel cut through dramatically red sandstone and moving inland. Sherlock did not even look up, keeping his eyes on the laptop or the mobile phone beside him. When the train started going in and out of tunnels cut through the hills, he started to mutter.

"What's wrong?"

The consulting detective sighed. "WiFi needs reasonable line of sight; phone signals get cut off in tunnels. This is getting to be a nuisance."

"Why not relax and look at the scenery for a while?"

"I'm not  _on holiday_ , John." The snapped reply betrayed scarcely controlled agitation.

"When was the last time you did go on holiday?"

"I can't remember. I must have deleted it as irrelevant. Most probably when I was a child and dragged somewhere against my will. Possibly France; my mother had relatives there on the south coast." He drank the last dregs of his black coffee in one gulp, and squashed the empty cup, rather savagely thrusting the crumpled remains into the litter bin between the seats across the aisle.

John tried to imagine the Holmes family on holiday. An image of Mycroft sitting on a blanket under a beach umbrella in a perfectly tailored sailor's suit complete with straw boater hat as a ten year old, while his mother tried to control a squirming toddler Sherlock…no, the idea was hard to contemplate.

"So, not one for the seaside, building sandcastles, paddling or swimming from the beach?"

"What do you know about me that makes you think I could possible  _like_ hot sun, blistered skin, scratchy sand, not to mention all the other 'holidaymakers'?" The taller man shuddered. "My idea of hell." He twitched and fidgeted for another few minutes, glowering at the unresponsive phone and laptop. Eventually, he gave up, and put the earbuds back in and switched to some music on his laptop, leaning back, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. The sigh he uttered was not one of contentment.

Eventually, the train rattled over a rail bridge suspended above the river Plym, alongside the A38 motorway. The view south over the estuary and to the sea was spectacular, and the houses of Plymouth lined the lumpy hills that formed the West Country's largest city. But if John was looking for quaint, olde England- he was disappointed. Looking up from where he was packing up his laptop, Sherlock smirked at the look on John's face. "Expecting something more picturesque? Don't bother. Most of Plymouth's old town was flattened by German bombers in the war. What's left is the hideous accretions of the 1960s, 70s and 80s urban concrete. It's a grey place."

The assessment was an accurate one as the train pulled into the 1960s concrete and pebble dashed station.  _Ugly as sin_. John was more used to London's variety of regenerated cityscape- here it was rather relentless lines of two storied terraced houses marching up and down the hillsides, under a sky scudding with dark clouds. Most of the passengers on the train were disembarking here, and it took them some time to make their way out onto the station forecourt. There John realised it was beginning to rain.

"And Plymouth is officially the wettest city in England," Sherlock added. "In the rain shadow of Dartmoor, a quarter of a million inhabitants endure more rain here than any other city."

"You're just a mine of depressing information, Sherlock. Any idea where the car hire place…oh, there's a sign." John was looking at a small sign indicating that the Budget Car Hire office was just to the left of the station car park.

"Not there, John. Follow me." Sherlock just strode out of the station up Alma road. His long legs and swinging stride made it hard for John to keep up.  _Quick march._

Across from a landscaped park, the doctor followed his friend into the large car park of the Hertz premises. "Why here?" John was curious.

"Because I have already reserved our transport, which the other company didn't offer." Sherlock told him to wait with the luggage and went into the office. He emerged moments later dangling a set of keys and then disappeared around the back. John wondered what sort of car he would turn up in, reminded of their conversation the night before.

"What do you mean, you don't drive? How is that possible, John?"

The doctor had looked a little uncomfortable. "I never learned. Never had a reason to. My dad had a car to get to and from his work, but my mum, sister and I went everywhere on buses. We lived in the city. I went to university in London- where a car is utterly pointless. I was a poor medical student, and then an even poorer army doctor. The army moves its people around; I don't need to drive." If this was said in a slightly defensive tone, it was because John had always felt a little embarrassed about it.

Sherlock smirked. "I learned when I was fourteen. On the estate; Frank Wallace* taught me. Fortunately, in my part of West Sussex other cars are few and far between, so learning there was not like learning to drive in London traffic. I've always liked to drive- it's a challenge handling the data flow without getting overwhelmed. Out in the countryside, it's less of a problem."

The way Sherlock described it made John realise that for someone on the Spectrum, driving would present its own unique challenges. He hoped that Sherlock's current, slightly frazzled, state would not be exacerbated by stimulus overload.

He heard the car coming around the corner of the rental office before he saw it. A large dark Landrover Defender  appeared, and pulled up alongside John. The window was rolled down and Sherlock gave him a stare.

"Well, get in. I'm not a chauffeur, so don't expect me to open doors for you. Can you read a map?"

That got him returning fire from the doctor. "Sherlock, I led troops on field exercises; of course I can read a map. Better than you can, I would expect."

As he stepped up into the high wheel base 4x4, John had a distinct sense of déjà vu. Lots of Landrovers in the army, perhaps too many in Afghanistan where they proved little defence against enemy IEDs, even when strengthened for combat.

"Why a Landrover, Sherlock, when you had a whole lot of other cars to choose from?" He pulled on the seatbelt, clicking it firmly in place and opening the map. At least with a car this size, opening the folded map would not get in the way of the driver.

Sherlock slipped the car into gear and pulled away. "I learned to drive in a Landrover. I don't have to think about it. And where we are going, off road four wheel drive work may be a distinct possibility. Actually…" here he gave one of his rather manic smiles, "…I hope we get an excuse. It adds a certain extra exhilaration to driving."

John wondered if now was a good time for Sherlock to be actively seeking extra stimulation; he seemed pretty wired all on his own. As they went out on the A386 Tavistock road, the afternoon traffic was not particularly heavy, and the doctor began to relax after some initial anxiety about Sherlock's driving. He handled the Landrover with consummate ease, and given the car's size, a lot of the other drivers tended to give it a wider berth. The town centre gave way to the comfortable suburbs of Derriford, and John found himself hoping more fervently than usual that the case would be a good one, able to keep Sherlock preoccupied and challenged for a reasonable length of time. He deserved it, after the dry patch he'd been made to endure by his brother.

In a surprisingly short time, the suburbs were left behind and the Landrover passed over a cattle grid onto open moorland. The signpost at the gate indicated that they were in Dartmoor National Park. Within a few hundred feet of the gate, the gorse and heather bushes started to appear, and amongst the scrubby low lying growth, John saw his first Dartmoor ponies.

"Maybe what Henry saw was just one of these ponies? In the dark, it could be mistaken for a large dog; I mean that one over there couldn't be more than three foot tall."

Sherlock did not take his eyes off the road. "What about the glowing red eyes, John? Knight was quite specific about his 'gigantic hound'. Even in the dark, an equine body shape is hard to mistake as a canine one. And paw prints are decidedly different from hoof prints."

That reminded John. "You haven't explained to me why you actually took this case. I mean, you spent a lot of time telling the poor man that he was delusional and boring, said no, and then suddenly changed your mind when he said the magic phrase , 'the footsteps of a gigantic hound.' What made you do that, if you think he is lying?"

"I don't think he is lying- or at least he thinks he's telling the truth about what he said he saw. There is something in that phrase… It's a very odd choice of words. It would have been more logical to say 'the paw prints' but he didn't; he said 'footprints'- something normally reserved for people. Why that word 'hound' is important, I'm not sure yet. But there is a link to Baskerville and what is going on at the installation. At the moment, it isn't clear. Once I get more data, then it should make sense."

"Are you saying that you have a  _hunch_? Sherlock, I thought the science of deduction is all about logic and fact. Are you admitting to something as imprecise as _intuition_?" John was surprised. "Wow- is this just an excuse to get out of London because you're bored? Could this be a wild goose chase?"

Sherlock looked at both sides of the road. "Ponies, cattle, sheep- no geese are kept on the moor, John. These are all stock released onto the heathland and carefully controlled. Ear tags and brands identify every animal. Not 'wild' at all. And no geese." He sounded a bit miffed at John's teasing.

John smirked.  _Sense of humour failure._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Frank Wallace is the Parham Estate gamekeeper. His role in Sherlock's life is covered in several of my other stories- Musgrave Blaze, the Shooting Party, and Defrag. He's one of my favourite OCs- and to put up with Sherlock on L Plates, he'd have to be patient!


	3. Chapter 3

John woke up with a start. Totally disorientated for a moment, he glanced around.  _Where am I?_ He was half sitting, half lying on a twin bed in a room he didn't recognise. Beside the bed, a small table lamp was on and shed some light on an unfamiliar scene. Then he saw the wooden beams across the ceiling, the framed paintings of Dartmoor hanging over the neatly made twin bed next to him.

It all came back in a rush, as he glanced at his alarm clock.  **2.12am**. There was no sign of the other occupant who should have been there. John had fallen asleep with the light on, waiting for Sherlock to return.

For the umpteenth time that night, John had to deal with the anger that welled up at the thought of what had happened over the previous twelve hours. He closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose to try to get his emotions back under control.

 _All too much to deal with._  The empty bed beside his was reproaching him.

The whole afternoon had passed in a blur as Sherlock's usual manic pace of case work exploded into a frenzy of action. They'd been driving on Dartmoor for less than an hour when they reached the signpost to Grimpen Village, but Sherlock had turned the Landrover in the opposite direction. He wanted to look at the lie of the land, understand where Baskerville was relative to the village, and get an idea where Dewer's Hollow was. Reading the map, John had directed him to a tor, a high point on the moor, where the granite rocks gave Sherlock the viewpoint he wanted. In a grim sort of coincidence, this turned out to be Dewer's Rock- where the Hounds of Wistman Woods were supposed to drive wayward travellers. In the bright sunlight, it had seemed harmless. In the distance, however, the minefield surrounding the research installation belied that casual assumption.

Henry Knight recommended they stay at the Cross Keys Inn: "The food is good, if a bit quirky. It's run by two Plymouth guys who got fed up with city life." With only seven bedrooms, a bar and a tiny restaurant, the inn was small and on such short notice they had to make do with sharing a twin bedded room. In a way, John was glad, because it would allow him to keep an eye on his friend, who showed no signs of relaxing. If anything, the agitation had become even worse. While John checked in and had a swift half pint of local real ale, Sherlock had prowled the confines of the public rooms, looking uneasy. John knew that apart from crime scenes, new places tended to make Sherlock uncomfortable. In the beamed cosy cottage that the Cross Keys had once been, the tall detective had to duck to get through the doorways, and seemed out of sorts.

John eventually found him outside, with someone else's half empty pint glass in front of him trying to chat up a local youth –one who was touting for walking tours on the moor, to see the mysterious 'hound'. Just the sort of tourist twaddle that Sherlock had derided, but John played along with his attempt to find out what, if any, evidence the lad had. Sherlock was in 'acting mode'. It was quite extraordinary to see the consulting detective willing and able to assume the behaviour of a perfectly normal person. John knew it was one of Sherlock's greatest skills- to be able to appear to be just the sort of person he needed to be in order to extract the maximum amount from a witness or suspect. For the sake of  _The Work_ , he was willing to do it. For those who didn't know the detective, he could be charm personified. It still surprised John every time Sherlock did it.

The cast of the paw print that the youth eventually revealed made John wonder. Could it have been faked? He took possession of a fifty pound note as his 'winnings' for the pretend bet. That made him wonder how Sherlock had managed to get it when the doctor had been keeping his bank card, to keep him away from temptations. But before he could broach the subject in private, Sherlock had bounded up the stairs, thrown his suitcase beside the twin bed nearest the window and announced that they had work to do. Before John could finish using the bathroom, Sherlock was gone. The doctor caught up with him in the car park, fingers drumming on the steering wheel, engine running.

As he got into the car again, Sherlock snapped. "I don't know why you bother to  _buy_  beer, John. It goes through you so fast that you might as well just rent it on a short term lease."

The doctor's reply was equally acerbic. "Some of us like to eat and drink, Sherlock. You might try it some time. Might help keep your blood sugars at a level where you wouldn't act like a sarky twelve year old all the time."

The sniping should have given him pause for thought. With hindsight, he now realised that he had let Sherlock shrug the comment off.  _I should have stopped him right there; made him rest._

But instead, John allowed Sherlock to drag him off on a full-frontal assault on Baskerville, bluffing their way into the compound, using his brother's stolen ID. At no point did Sherlock explain what he intended doing; he just assumed that John would fall in. The risks of getting caught shocked John. Impersonating someone to get unauthorised access to a secret facility was a crime. Which is probably why Sherlock did not even ask. John kept wondering at what point they would be pulled aside, arrested or thrown into a cell. The adrenaline in his system increased dramatically with each passing moment as Sherlock kept the ruse going longer and longer.

After being introduced to a Doctor Stapleton, John realised that Sherlock was linking up a child's plea on John's blog about her missing Bluebell with what was going on at the installation. Once out of earshot of the corporal escorting them on their tour, he whispered incredulously to Sherlock, "Did we just break into a military base to investigate a rabbit?"

 _I should have called a halt then and there._  It was not in the least bit funny, but Sherlock was treating it as if it were one huge prank. Not for the first time since they'd arrived on Dartmoor, John wondered if being deprived of cases for so long had somehow pushed Sherlock over the edge of being able to determine what was sensible and what was outrageous. The exchange of texts with Mycroft seemed to amuse Sherlock enormously.

The process was enough to put John seriously on edge- he didn't like being taken for granted, or being put into the position of committing a crime. This was no casual lock pick or clandestine break in to an empty flat. Maybe it was the fact that it was a military base; whatever the cause, it made him angry that Sherlock just assumed John would go along with it, unquestioning. Forced to play along, the whole charade nearly broke down for good when the security system finally identified the misuse of Mycroft's ID, but fortunately they were saved by the unlikely intervention of Doctor Frankland, who lied on their behalf, protecting them. Frankland was able to figure out who Sherlock and John really were and the fact that they had been brought into the picture because of Henry Knight, luckily doing so without tipping off the base commander.

By the time they managed to walk back to the Landrover to escape from the installation, John's nerves were frayed. He watched Sherlock's nonchalance as he turned up his collar, and snapped, "Oh, please, can we not do this, this time?"

"Do what?"

"You ...being all mysterious with your cheekbones and turning your coat collar up so you look cool."

For a moment, Sherlock seemed a bit taken aback by the acid tone of John's voice. "…I don't do that."

"Yeah, you do." John's retort was more weary and annoyed than affectionate.

Looking back on what happened next, John couldn't decide whether he was more angry at Sherlock, or at himself for not stopping the consulting detective. Perhaps he had been so relieved at getting out of Baskerville without getting caught that he didn't do enough to slow Sherlock down, get him to talk through his plans so the doctor could urge more caution.

Now five hours later, with the benefit of hindsight, he looked over at the untouched twin bed and wondered again when he should have intervened. The whole thing made him  _angry._  With a grunt, he sat up on the edge of his twin bed and then got up, wandering to the ensuite bathroom to wash his face and try to get a hold on his temper.

Normally, Sherlock was like a guided missile on a case- all investigation and deduction skills on full throttle. But, even then, he had developed over the years a willingness to take John along with him during the journey, telling him what was happening, what he was about to do, or testing ideas out with the doctor. This case was different. Sherlock had told him virtually nothing, springing surprise after surprise on him. At no point did he seek John's advice.

As they made their escape from Baskerville, John had tried to get Sherlock to open up.

"So, the glow-in-the-dark rabbit is a genetic experiment that escaped. And if that lad at the pub is to be believed, it's not the first escape. Doctor Frankland clearly doesn't think much of his colleague Doctor Stapleton; maybe that's because she allowed it to escape?"

A noncommittal "hmmm" was the only response from Sherlock, who was concentrating on the road; as the sun was settling toward the horizon, the moor's livestock seemed to be on the move. Coming around a blind curve, he had to take a sudden evasive manoeuvre off the side of the tarmac to miss a group of three sheep who were lying down across the road.

As the Landrover bounced back onto the road surface, John blurted out, "Why are sheep so stupid?"

"They're not. Road surface retains heat, John. Think of it as the sheep's equivalent of an electric blanket."

"Must make night time driving on the moor a bit of an obstacle course." He looked over his shoulder at the sight of the three sheep again; they were totally oblivious to the near miss.

"That's why the speed limit in the park is only 40 miles per hour. Too much livestock gets hit at night."

John shook his head. "Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will hit this supposed hound."

The detour deflected him from putting Sherlock on the spot and asking him to be more up front about his plans.  _The first missed opportunity._

When they reached the main road, Sherlock surprised him again by turning in the opposite direction from the signpost showing Grimpen Village was 1.5 miles to the right.

"Where to now?" John's tone conveyed his weariness and frustration. He was feeling tired, as the adrenaline faded. And hungry. Sherlock's focus on the case had meant they'd missed lunch, and John was looking forward to a shower and a pub dinner. Perhaps if he'd put his foot down then, the rest of the night would have passed off without drama.

Instead, Sherlock drove them straight to Henry Knight's house. A good two miles away from Grimpen Village, the large house was in open moorland. And once there, he proceeded to announce his intention to take Henry Knight back to Dewer's Hollow. "We take you back onto the moor, and see if anything attacks you."

John had been astonished. To do such a thing to a badly traumatised person was the height of cruelty- and downright dangerous to their client's mental health. But Sherlock was not deterred by Henry's nervous reluctance. John's own incredulous reaction to the "plan" was shrugged off with the flippant comment, "if there is a monster out there, John, there's only one thing to do: find out where it lives."

If only.

If only he'd argued that it was madness to do this at night. _The second missed opportunity._  But, he hadn't done more than offer a token protest. So it was that John found himself out on the moor as darkness fell. Using a torch to light his way towards the woods where Dewer's hollow was, John brought up the rear.  _The third missed opportunity._  If he'd not been at the back, he might not have been separated from the other two. His attention was distracted by the sight of a light across the moor, which went on and off in a most regular manner. He stopped to watch long enough to catch the meaning in Morse code- UMQRA- and then hurried after the other two. In the darkness, he'd missed where they left the main track and went down into Dewer's Hollow.

He'd heard the anguished canine howl ahead of him and started running. But, crucially, he wasn't there when Henry and Sherlock were down in the hollow. He only met the two men coming back, after the second howl. "Did you hear that?"

In the dark, Sherlock went past him, coat swirling behind him. John could hear Henry crying out, almost hysterically, "We saw it, we saw it!"

Over his shoulder Sherlock reacted with a sharp, "No, I didn't see anything."

Henry reacted with shock, and ran after Sherlock. " _What_? What are you talking about?" His disbelief was evident to John. It was almost as if he felt betrayed.

Sherlock was adamant. "I didn't …see… _anything_."

And that was the last thing that Sherlock said for some time. He got behind the driver's wheel, and sat stony-faced while the other two got into the back seat of the Landrover. By now Henry was almost hysterical and John focused on keeping him calm. Sherlock drove straight back to Knight's house, where John helped the young man out of the car and into the house, trying to calm him down. Rummaging in the bathroom cupboard, he found what he was looking for- a mild sedative prescribed by Henry's therapist. He could hear Henry talking in the background, half to himself, half to the doctor, repeating over and over that Sherlock must have seen the hound, no matter what he said. In an odd way, the younger man seemed to take some perverse comfort in that fact, as if it meant he was not making it all up.

By the time John got Henry calm enough to be left, Sherlock had retreated into total silence. No matter what John said, there was no reply. The short journey back to Grimpen was made even shorter by the speed with which Sherlock drove. Barely in control, he was well over the 40 limit, and John prayed they wouldn't find another bunch of sheep or a pony on the road. After a few abortive attempts to get Sherlock to slow down, John gave up. As soon as the Landrover was parked, Sherlock was out of the car and striding away from the Inn.

"Where are you going  _now_ , Sherlock?" John was just about at the end of his patience.

"I need to  _think_."

"Well, you just do that. I'm hungry, tired and more than a little fed up. I'm going in, having a shower and then some supper."

There was no reply, not that he expected one. He watched his friend disappear into the darkness, before he turned and headed up to the room.

 _And that was the fourth and most important missed opportunity._ When he next laid eyes on Sherlock, something had changed, and not for the better.


	4. Chapter 4

The sound of gravel crunching underfoot in the dark- he anchored himself to the sound and tried to block everything else out. The lights at the front of the Cross Keys Inn, the heat escaping from the overworked car engine that he could feel on his skin, the scent of motor oil and rubber that was the signature aroma of a Landrover driven hard. He fled them as fast as his unbalanced walking could take him.

John's voice pushed through the swirling sensations, but he ignored the words. He couldn't spare the mental effort needed to decode the meaning; he got enough from the peevish tone to know that he had done something wrong. John was angry again. He'd been getting angrier all afternoon, and Sherlock couldn't understand why.

He no longer cared. He just had to get away. Find a place with less stimulation, a chance to get his breathing back under control, catch his balance again and get rid of the images that were clogging up the Mind Palace.

As Sherlock forced his legs to carry him down the middle of the Grimpen Village road in the dark, he fisted his hands in his dark hair and pulled.  _Stay upright. Do NOT fall._ He needed pain to centre himself again.  _What's wrong with me?!_

Ever since he'd gone down into the hollow, he'd been a mess. What happened down there frightened him.  _Not logical. Not possible._ He  _knew_  that he could not have seen what he  _believed_  he had seen. He shook his head as if hoping to dislodge the image of a snarling canine the size of a pony that was burned into his retina. Was this some sort of strange meltdown? It felt a bit like one- only miles worse. Ever since he went into that hollow, he'd had a rising sense of panic. After trying to ignore it for more than a half an hour, he felt it blossom into a full fight-or-flight response.

He'd not lost control like this for years, even decades.

It had been like a car crash in ultraslow motion. As if watching himself from a distance, he recognised the symptoms. He'd seen the hound- yes, he believed he had, even though he knew such a thing did not, could not exist. He had been so shocked by that revelation that he had lied to Henry. Then on the way back to the Landrover, he watched as each box on the checklist of physical reactions was ticked. His chest tightened, his breathing sped up; a searing headache started at the back of his neck. He walked faster and faster, driven by a physiological, psychological pattern that he had wilfully deleted. Never mind; it all came rushing back.  _Nothing is ever truly deleted_.

Once he got back to the car, he stared at the metal hulk, uncomprehending for a moment, and then realised that he was going to have to drive it, because Henry Knight was now almost hysterical and John didn't know how.  _Can logic hold off the tidal wave?_

His need to flee overcame his reluctance to get behind the wheel in his current state. Sherlock somehow got himself under control enough to get the car started, into gear and move off. He didn't dare speak, knowing that his normal fluency would be replaced by a stuttering manic rant. He drove too fast, but he didn't seem to be able to control himself- the need to get off the moor took over. He drove into Henry Night's drive way, gravel spraying as he slammed on the brakes. When from the back seat John helped Henry from the car and into the house, Sherlock stayed immobile in the driver's seat - paralysed with anxiety.

 _Please, John, hurry, hurry, hurry… I don't know how long I can last!_  It was the one lesson that Frank Wallace had drummed into his head along with every bit of road safety he could manage- "DON'T drive when you are having sensory issues. It's the fastest way to get yourself killed- and to kill others, too." The mantra came in a Scottish accented voice, and right now it was going around and around and around like some demented iPod shuffle gone wrong.

When John got back into the front passenger seat, Sherlock said nothing, just put the car into reverse and spun out another rash of gravel as he reversed and accelerated. Once on the main road, he drove like a man possessed. Around every bend, every dip of the road he waited for the red burning eyes, the snarling growl, the white of the fangs. If he looked in the rear-view mirror, it was all he could see. He shut off the noise of John talking; he was too far gone to understand a word of it.

When the beacon of the Inn's lights shone through the darkness, Sherlock homed in, like some guided missile on autopilot. Then it was in the car park space, engine off, take key from ignition and throw open the car door. Don't look at John, don't let him see. It's too embarrassing. Run,  _RUN_.

But, his legs weren't able to comprehend what his mind was sending in terms of nerve impulses. He staggered on, past the last house on the lane, its curtained windows glowing with lights. His visual distortion was growing- every light source now had a circular aura around it, like some special effect on a camera. He fled further into the darkness.

His mind kept spinning off on tangents. He was glad that out here, in a rural village, there would be no CCTV cameras. For the last month, he'd lived in perpetual fear of being seen by his brother, finally succumbing to the pressure of it all.  _Bastard, you WANT me to fail._

Sherlock stopped in the middle of the road and looked up, trying to find something to focus his eyes on, something to centre his attention.

There was nothing. No stars, no moon- no streetlights in the countryside. Just a dark blanket of moist and heavy cloud. He wished he could wrap himself up in a blanket, like he used to when he was a child. Tight. Heavy. He found his skin aching for the pressure of something heavy, something to replace the crawling, the tingling and twitching of nerves misfiring. He could hear his own heartbeat, thumping a staccato rhythm in his ear, as if the eardrum itself was vibrating in sympathy to the physical contractions of his heart muscle. He found himself counting the tiny gap between the nerve impulse firing and the muscle contracting, imagining the arrhythmia growing ever wider until finally his heart would just stop, unmoored from his brain, unwilling to keep him alive.

 _Stop this, STOP IT NOW. You are not going to die._ He staggered over to a darker shape at the side of the road, and realised that it was a bus shelter. A metal pole and a sign beside it confirmed his deduction as he threw himself onto the wooden slats of a bench and pushed his head down between his knees.  _Don't pass out. You can manage this._

A voice crept in- an avatar from his mind palace, one seldom accessed, and only in extreme emergencies. A soft calming voice, a scent of perfume that was unique, made for her by a company in Paris. She knew better than to touch him at times like these. The instructions though- they were welcome. "Breathe in, and count to five. Breathe out, and count to five. Do it again. Slower. Through your nose, not your mouth. Imagine the air filling up a balloon; keep going. Concentrate only on that one thing." He'd had panic attacks and meltdowns too often as a child. It made him terrified he was going to have another one when he least wanted it. That thought alone made it a self-fulfilling prophecy, all too often.

Sherlock's normal reaction to even a whiff of a meltdown was to run, to hide, to avoid. He had learned the worst possibility was to have one in the presence of his father. Somewhere in the dark of the bus shelter, he heard another voice cutting across his mother's soft instructions. "Not again, little brother; this is getting tedious." Mycroft's opprobrium had replaced that of his father. His brother used Sherlock's weaknesses to justify almost everything – limiting his independence, interfering with his choices, even his liberty on the occasions when enforced rehab was involved.

"No." He groaned, his ear hearing what his vocal chords formed into a word. The gap between the thought, the action and then hearing the sound seemed to stretch like an elastic band, with gaps of nothing in between. His sense of time was distorting now.  _Another box ticked._

He was filled with an impossible rage. Sat upright and then leaned to the right until the side of his head smacked against the wooden side of the bus shelter. He did it again, and again, using the pain to give him a lifeline of control.

 _There is too much at stake_. The whole of the Moriarty game plan depended on Sherlock being able to convince Elizabeth Ffoukes that he was capable of pulling it off, that Mycroft's prophecies of failure were wrong. The pressure of no case work was Mycroft's nuclear weapon- the ultimate test to destruction.  _I have to pull myself together and get back in there._  If he couldn't do it, then his brother would win. No, worse, Morarity would win. And John would most likely die. And the Irishman would then probably kill Sherlock.  _Too much to lose; have to stop this now._

Somehow, from somewhere deep inside him, Sherlock found the means to stand up, leave the bus shelter and head back to the lights of the Cross Keys Inn.  _Work to be done._


	5. Chapter 5

When John went into the bar to pick up the room key, he snagged a Cornish pasty off the counter top and asked for a bottle of orange juice, taking both up to the room where he devoured them whilst watching the evening news. Then he unpacked, had a shower and changed his clothes. Once he felt human again, he went back downstairs, thinking that he'd have to go find Sherlock and see if he was alright. Sometimes, the two of them just needed to have a time out. He'd learned that when Sherlock retreated into non-communication mode, there wasn't a whole lot of point in hanging about or badgering him. It didn't work, and it only ended up annoying both of them. So, he'd learned the art of "getting some air". This time it was Sherlock who'd gone off for a walk, which was okay with John as it let him deal with the day's stresses and strains.

When he brought the plate and empty bottle back down to the bar, the proprietor gave him a smile. "Had a bit of a domestic, then?"

John shook his head emphatically, "we're not a couple; he's a friend and we work together, that's all." If John put a little more force behind the words than might have been polite, it was only because he was seriously tired of people always drawing the wrong conclusion.

"Oh." The big man pulled another pint, and looked over John's shoulder into the main room of the bar area. "Well, that's as may be, but your friend in there is in a right state. Came in here and ordered a double whisky and is now in there looking rattled. I thought you two had a tiff, but if that's not the case, then you'd best see what's the matter with him. He doesn't look well."

oOo

"Well" was not a word that Sherlock would even recognise at the moment. His need to deny Mycroft a victory was warring with the screaming voice in his head that said "Run.  _HIDE_. You're not fit to be seen." He'd forced himself back into the Cross Keys, but the effort made his heart race and when he opened the door into the snug bar, the heat and noise hit him like a shock wave from a bomb. He literally staggered for a moment, but disguised it as he shook himself free from his Belstaff and hung it on the peg. He was sweating in seconds, his skin clammy and his shirt stuck to his back.

 _Got to slow things down._  With this much panic floating around his veins, he needed a chemical solution. As averse as he was to alcohol, alternative drugs were not likely to be found late at night in the middle of Dartmoor. With perverse pleasure, he saw a bottle of Mycroft's favourite brand of single malt whisky on the shelf behind the barman.

"A double of the Dalmore 1978. On the tab." It gave him sadistic pleasure at the idea of putting the cost of the drink and the room tariff on the bill, given that it was secured by Mycroft's own credit card. John thought that the ID was the only thing he'd liberated from his brother. But, having given John his own bank card for safekeeping, Sherlock was nothing if not inventive.

"Oh, well done- so you've a taste for the  _fine_ stuff then." The barman was trying to be engaging. Sherlock couldn't spare the energy to even look at him, but collected the glass without another word and went into the smaller of the rooms, sitting in one of the only two unoccupied chairs, in front of the log fire. The other tables were occupied with diners, at various stages of an evening meal. He ignored them in the hope that they would ignore him. He took a deep gulp of the brown liquid down and harboured murderous thoughts about Mycroft.

"It's not your sort of indulgence, Sherlock, but then you don't go in for something as refined as alcohol, do you? And, taste just doesn't enter into the equation when you prefer to inject." The stentorian tones emerged from the mouth of his Mycroft avatar, who just sneered at him. "This 1978 vintage release from The Dalmore spent 29 years in American white oak before being transferred into Gonzales Byass ex-Sherry casks for two years of additional maturation."

 _Pompous ass._ As if he gave a toss about it- it was still just 40% alcohol distilled from sprouted barley grains. The malting modified the starches into sugars-  _Yes, Fatty- just like CAKE; excessively sweet, empty calories. No wonder you love it ._ Monosaccharide glucose, disaccharide and trisaccharide maltose, and the maltodextrine sugars. Together with the sucrose and fructose found naturally in the grain, they provided more than enough sustenance for the yeasts to get to work during fermentation.

"Chemistry is so pedantic, Sherlock. You neglect the artistry. There were only ever 477 bottles of this particular Dalmore made."  _And you've had more than your fair share, brother mine._  The avatar mocked him, "the nose offers freshly ground coffee, marzipan, dark berries and rich sherry, with milk chocolate and a hit of orange on the back palate notes." Sherlock took another swallow of the dark, strong alcohol, giving an involuntary shudder as it went down in a burn. The avatar was tutting at him now. "You really should have added water, Sherlock. You're the chemist; you should know that will bring out the smokiness."  _Peat, you bastard; it's peat with high traces of organic matter, aldehydes and esters in the water they use in the distillation._ It was nothing like smoking.  _God, I need a cigarette_. He'd have given a hundred pounds for one right now. It made him look back towards the bar. He stopped himself from getting up and going to ask where the cigarette machine was. Can't smoke in a pub anymore; illegal.  _John will have put him on the payroll._  Just to ask would mean being busted, and John would come down on him like a tonne of bricks.

 _Not fair, not fair, not fair!_   _I only agreed to do this when I wasn't in such desperate need._  Sherlock wondered if this was what it felt like to lose one's mind. What an odd phrase, as if he'd misplaced his sanity somewhere, like a scarf or a pair of gloves. But, whatever tricks his Mind Palace was playing on him right now, he wanted nothing more than for it to stop. Because it had betrayed him- it told him that there was a gigantic hound out on the moor. He'd seen it, when at one and the same time, he knew it was impossible.

Then he heard John behind him, talking to the barman. For a moment, Sherlock wondered if he had the strength to get out of the room without causing a scene. All he wanted to do was flee. John would see that there was something wrong and then the game would be up, Mycroft would be called and he'd be dragged off to rehab again.  _But, I'm NOT using! I haven't touched a needle or a pill. I'm CLEAN!_ He closed his eyes to try to stem the rising tide of sensory distress and the emotional meltdown that was coming.

John came in and sat down in the other chair beside the fire. Sherlock heard him say something about Henry. At least he thought it might be the client; it could have been about him though- some drivel about being manic and believing he'd seen a gigantic dog. Yes- that fit him as well as Henry. The man was now blathering something meaningless about a Morse code and odd letters- U.M.Q.R.A. Disoriented, Sherlock could barely register what the doctor was saying. He tried to control his physical manifestations of his mental distress, but found it increasingly hard. Tremors, eye blinks- he was working up to the full Monty at any moment of twitching and flapping.

He summoned up  _that_  avatar, and the scent of her calmed him for a nanosecond as she repeated in her soft gentle voice, "Breathe in through your nose. Count to Five. Now out through your mouth. Count to five. Slower. You can do this Sherlock, there is no need to panic."

 _God, get a hold of yourself!_  He had to shut John up. The chatter was becoming too distracting. "Henry was right." It was the first thing that popped into Sherlock's mind and then straight out through his mouth, with no conscious thought involved.

"What?"

 _Is the man deaf? Does he have any idea how hard it is to repeat myself?_ But out it came anyway; like Pavlov's dog, Sherlock's tongue wagged by instinct, "I saw it too."

The idiot repeated his "What?"

Something inside Sherlock's head exploded at the repetition. He heard himself answering, "I saw it too, John." As if putting the man's name in front of the same words would help him understand it this time. But, he didn't. There ensued one of the strangest conversations Sherlock ever experienced. He had no conscious awareness of forming the words that he heard coming out of his mouth. Everything said was heard as if it were happening on another continent, with one of those annoying satellite delays and echoes going on. Most bizarre.

At some point, the tone changed. John put on his "doctor" voice and started saying things like "wired" and "worked up". Why would he mention a child psychologist called Spock?  _Just go away, John. Leave me alone._  Then came a "dark and scary" comment- as if he was a child. Something ripped open Sherlock's reticence, and out came anger. He realised he was starting to hyperventilate.

 _Why is everyone looking at me?_  He must have said something too loud, too inappropriate.  _Inappropriate._  He'd been taught the meaning of that word from an early age, usually accompanied by a physical reminder from a father who thought his very existence to be inappropriate, if not downright inconvenient. He heard echoes of his ten year old voice in a half shouted, "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!"

Then John asked a question that set Sherlock off on a strange tangent. Dog, dog, something about dogs. No not  _that_  one; not the one that he had seen with Henry. No, this one was small and white and belonged to the widow and her pathetic son in the ghastly pullover sitting just there. Sherlock unleashed a frantic series of deductions to show that he was still in control. Mycroft had not won. He ended with a flourish, "I am fine, in fact I've never been better, so just  _leave me alone_."

Then John said something about friends, something that made no sense to Sherlock. His tongue said something again; he couldn't be sure what it was, but he put enough venom behind it to make it clear to the doctor that he needed to disappear. Whatever he said must have worked, because John disappeared and Sherlock could breathe again. For almost ten minutes he had a chance to try to calm himself down. Then he felt the eyes of the other people in the room on him. Any moment now someone was going to say something, and he couldn't bear it any longer. He'd spent his entire life living in fear of what people were going to say about how he was behaving. The whisky was sloshing around in his stomach making him feel nauseated. He had to get up and leave, or embarrass himself even further.

On his way out of the room, Sherlock noticed the barman- this time talking to a woman who had just sat down. Sherlock's glance at her made him almost stop mid-step. His addled brain seized hold of her image as if it was a life line.  _Important; she's important_. The case- this was something crucial. The barman addressed her by name. "Doctor Mortimer", that's what he called her. This was Henry's therapist. Sherlock carried on walking past and then stopped just in the doorway. For a split second he was torn, afraid to leave. She could be crucial to the case, but he was in no way capable of holding a conversation or getting what he needed from her. He groaned inwardly.  _Where's John when I really need him?_  Yes, he knew that he'd just chased him away, but he needed him back now or they'd lose this chance. He fumbled in his suit pocket, his hands shaking so much that it was hard to grip the phone. When he finally got it out, it took him three goes to type in and then correct the mistakes.

 **10.18pm Henry's therapist currently in Cross Keys Pub S**  For some reason, his fingers couldn't manage the H.

The reply was almost instant,

**10.19pm So?**

_Not helpful, John_. It provoked a growl from Sherlock.

**10.19pm Interview her?**

This time Sherlock's anger fuelled his texting, so he managed to do it without having to make any corrections. A moment later, his phone chirped and he looked at the screen.

**10.19pm WHY SHOULD I?**

By now Sherlock was standing in front of the coat peg with his Belstaf. All he wanted to do was flee, and John had decided to get bolshie on him. He banged his head up against the coat in frustration. He wracked his memory to try to understand why John would be so aggressively annoying. Probably something he'd said. Whatever it was, he'd deleted it.  _Appeal to his baser instincts._  He walked back to the doorway, adjusted the setting on his phone so it wouldn't flash and took the woman's picture. Then he sent it. The therapist was pretty, about John's age and she was "his type", whatever that meant. Sherlock knew from experience that whenever John got peeved with his behaviour, he'd usually go off and seek female companionship as some sort of antidote of normality. Well, for once he could do that and be helpful at the same time.

Sherlock had just enough presence of mind to grab his coat off the peg, but lacked the physical capacity to put it on before bolting from the Inn. The cool night air slapped his damp skin and overheated face, and for a moment he just stopped, willing to be overwhelmed by the temperature change. Then his body betrayed him, yet again, by starting to shiver involuntarily, his stomach muscles beginning to spasm. And it got harder to breathe.

This time he knew he could not go back indoors. He was going to have to find a place to hide. Because whatever was going on in his mind, it was getting harder and harder to put two thoughts together. It was like someone was driving a spike into the back of his head.

He knew he was only moments away from vomiting, which got him moving again. He stepped away from the building and headed down the line of the cars parked in front. When he reached the dark familiar bulk of the Landrover, he walked to the driver's side, and squatted down, heaving up the dregs of Mycroft's favourite malt whisky.  _That was an even shorter lease than John's beer._  The thought gave him the giggles, which he recognised as incipient hysteria. He heaved again. And found himself wishing that the Mycroft avatar would shut up about what a waste of good whisky it was.

Once he was sure there was nothing left to vomit, he unlocked the back of the Landrover, and crawled in. Pushing himself to the back of the luggage compartment, he pulled his Belstaff over his head and tried to ride out whatever it was that was tearing his head apart.


	6. Chapter 6

The hallucination started not quite an hour later. Sherlock's avatars were a useful addition to his Mind Palace, but there were some that he rarely used, and only  _in extremis_. When one of these started talking to him, he realised that this was no ordinary meltdown.

"So, remind me why we are hiding in the back of this hunk of British tin?" The Irish accent was unmistakeable. Sherlock pulled the Belstaff away from his face, and looked across the back compartment of the Landrover at the man he least expected or wanted to see.

He struggled into an upright position, pushing himself as far away from those manic eyes as he could get.  _Get out of my mind. I don't need you now!_

"Oh, no, no, no my little consulting detective; you aren't in charge. The consulting criminal is…didn't I make that clear that night at the pool?" Moriarty tutted. "Just look at you. What a mess. And you think you have what it takes to beat me?" He started to laugh. "Oh My God- how very pathetic. Can't even manage a little local Devon mystery and you think you can take me on? I have a worldwide network, Sherlock. You'll have to raise your game if you want to play with me."

The man in a sharp suit leaned forward with an avid mania in his eyes. "I'm just going to eat you up, Sherlock. That's no hound out on the moor- it's  _me._ I'm on the prowl and I'm going to catch you. Sink me teeth into you and spit the bones out on your brother's door step. Then he can say, 'I told you so, Sherlock; you were too little to play with the big boys.'"

With a snarl of rage, Sherlock flung himself at the man, arms out to crush the life out of that cocky mouth. His hands hit the side of the back window, where the white throat had just been inviting him to take a short cut through all his best laid plans.

The voice started up behind him- in the very same corner that he'd just thrown himself out of. "You missed me, you missed me; now you've got to kiss me…" The childish taunt made him whirl around to see those dark eyes staring right back into his, only inches away. "I'm not  _reeeeally here_ , Sherlock. Haven't you figured that out by now? Or are you so far gone that you can't recognise a hallucinogen when you're actually under the influence?"

"I'm CLEAN. I'm not taking drugs." He started to roll up his sleeve on his left arm to prove the point.

"Oh, you  _are_  an idiot. Sherlock's an idiot; Sherlock's an idiot." The same sing-song taunts of his childhood, now spouted by his deadliest enemy.

Moriarty clapped his hands together in glee. "Who said anything about you  _taking_  drugs, you moron? But someone naughty might have  _given_  you drugs- without you knowing. You know, slipped you a 'mickey finn', spiked a drink, fed you a fudge brownie? There are lots of ways you can be drugged without you knowing."

" _OH!"_  Sherlock sank back against the window.  _This isn't a meltdown. I'm not losing my mind. I've been drugged!_

The Irishman was now grinning at him. "Lookey, lookey- the penny's dropped, that slow Mind Palace of yours finally got there. You'll have to do better than this, Sherlock."

"Go away. You've served your purpose." To his surprise, the avatar obliged, vanishing with a virtual politeness that his real life incarnation had never possessed.

It fit. The symptoms he had been feeling- loss of physical control, his mental confusion, the tremors and emotional outbursts. Fear, panic and paranoia. Not signs of mental breakdown, or even a meltdown caused by sensory overload. No- this was drug-induced. And the fact that he had realised it was due to the drug starting to wear off.

He started to work backwards. When and where could he have been drugged and by whom? Even more important, with what? This didn't feel like any drug trip that Sherlock had enjoyed before, and he had experimented with quite a few over the years. Normally, he didn't favour hallucinogens. Really didn't do it for him. He looked for a stimulant to focus his acuity, or an opiate to try to switch off the overload. There never really seemed much point to willfully distorting one's perceptions of reality. His senses were too highly strung to start with.

But under the influence of a mind-bending drug, the simple suggestion of a gigantic hound could have led him to believe he had seen it.

Then, had both he and Henry been drugged? If so, Knight must have also been drugged the night before he arrived at Baker Street in a state of panic.  _File that- it's an important clue._

But what about John? He wasn't with them when they saw the hound; did that mean he wasn't drugged, or that he was, but the trigger wasn't present? He needed to think this through very carefully.

And above all else,  _WHY_? What advantage was gained by drugging either Henry Knight or the consulting detective he'd hired to find out what was happening? Who benefited from this?

His brain was still as slow as treacle. The drug must be interfering with things, making it harder for him to deduce motive, and opportunity. Yet, as frustrating as the slow train of thought was, he also welcomed it with open arms. Meltdowns were incredibly embarrassing. For someone who prided himself on his logical control, the total loss of control was just … humiliating.  _I feel like I'm ten years old again_. The scene in the pub in front of John was just raw, unfiltered exposure of a part of him that he thought he'd beaten. To realise that it was a drug that was doing this to him rather than a regression was a revelation.

 _I'm not going crazy. This isn't me._ The sense of relief was…overwhelming.

oOo

Relief was not something that John was feeling. With each passing minute, he was getting more concerned about Sherlock's disappearance. It was strange. Out here, where the chance of him going off the rails and succumbing to the temptation of drugs was so slim, John should be relaxed about the man going AWOL. The worst that he could be doing is smoking a cigarette cadged off of some diner at the Inn. There was no shop in the village, not that it would be open at this hour in any case. So, there was no reason to panic.

And yet. Sherlock's behaviour had been both perplexing and way out of line. Months ago, John had read up on how people on the Spectrum can behave, when he learned that his flatmate was…well, who he was. Some of the symptoms were recognisable, everyday fare for anyone living in close proximity of the man. The agitation, the sensory overloads, the timeouts playing possum on the sofa, the lack of social skills, the importance of familiar faces, places and routines to his mental well-being. But, until now, he'd never seen a meltdown. Was that what had happened in their fireside chat? The doctor couldn't figure it out.

Sherlock's reactions had been atypical from the very start: the "will I, won't I?" vacillation about taking the case, then the bizarre behaviour with Henry Knight even at the first interview. But, Sherlock's total callousness about taking a traumatised man onto the moor angered John. The result could have set Henry back seriously in his treatment. He was also angry at his own inability to get Louise Mortimer to tell him much of anything before Doctor Frankland intervened and sabotaged his efforts, all but saying that he and Sherlock were more than just colleagues.

He groaned at that thought. "Colleagues"- that's what he'd said to correct Sherlock's use of the word friend in front of Sebastian Wilkes all those months ago. But, now when he tried to use the "friend" word, he'd had it thrown back in his face. And Sherlock was doing his damnedest to keep him in the dark about what was going on. He felt so…frustrated and useless. It made him question the whole point of why he was here.

Something seismic had shifted in their relationship, and he didn't know what it meant. It was worrying him. How should he react? The online texts about ASD had all stressed how important it was to avoid being judgmental. He remembered one "how to handle a meltdown" site- the checklist said "DO NOT ask me if I am drunk or on drugs." That raised a wry smile, because if he didn't know any better, that's what he would have assumed last night was all about- that somehow Sherlock had found a stash of something weird in the wilds of Dartmoor and was having a bad trip. But, apart from the moments when they'd been separated from them at Dewer's Hollow, he'd been with Sherlock since they left London. And he'd been acting strange even before that.

_Shows what little I know about what goes on in that head of his._

That checklist had said not to go after someone in meltdown- to give them space, and not to press them. As much as John wanted to know what the hell Sherlock was doing, that checklist kept reappearing in his thoughts. The site was written by someone with Asperger's who wrote that after a meltdown, it took time for the person to re-establish their equilibrium, warning "Unless you can handle an unfiltered aspie, proceed with caution."

As he put on his pyjamas and crawled into his bed, John turned out the light. He didn't think Sherlock was likely to be reappearing anytime soon.


	7. Chapter 7

At 5.30am John's resolve cracked. He'd barely slept; what little he'd managed had been interrupted by dreams of howling dogs chasing him through a forest.

When he finally gave up and decided to get up, the empty untouched twin bed next to his accused him of neglect. No sign of the consulting detective, and the sun had been up for a while already. The joys of an English summer- even when the air was still crisp, the longest day wasn't far off, so the sun rose at the ridiculous hour of 4.45am. As he shaved, washed and dressed, three texts had been sent, but no response received. John put his green jacket on and went out into the crisp morning air. The Landrover was still in its place. As he walked by it, his nose caught a whiff of stale vomit, so he investigated, and found a patch, not yet dried by the sun, given it was in the shade cast between the driver's door and the next parked car.

So, Sherlock had been ill. That fitted with a meltdown and sensory disruption. Whatever that website had said about giving someone space, John's irritation at his friend's outrageous behaviour of the previous night was being edged out now by concern. He'd been so worried about Henry Knight's traumatic reaction that he had not thought much about Sherlock. Yet, the more he rehearsed the scene in the pub, the more he realised that Sherlock was definitely not reacting rationally.

He decided to do the one thing that he had not done before now when confronted by Sherlock's behaviour last night. He pulled out his phone and hit speed dial- third number down the list.

Mycroft's calm tones answered on the third ring. "Doctor Watson. How may I be of assistance at this early hour?"

 _Does he never sleep?_  "You do know where we are?"

"Of course, the security team were kind enough to inform me of your unauthorised presence at Baskerville. How did you manage to talk your way out?"

"That's a story for later. What's needed now is…some advice." John could almost visualise the left eyebrow rising on that rather patrician face. "Sherlock…" the doctor ground to a halt. He wasn't sure how to phrase it.

"What's he done now? Do attempt to put it into words; contrary to what my brother might think, I am not a mind-reader."

The tone annoyed John enough that he snapped back, "he had what I think would be characterised as a full scale meltdown last night. And he's disappeared, too. On foot; the car's still in front of the hotel."

"Describe it." The previous caustic sarcasm was replaced by a more neutral tone.

So John did, in detail. After which, he added, "And when he assured me that he was fine, I decided to follow what the website suggested and leave him to it, rather than provoke anything more. I thought once he'd cooled off that he'd show up, but it's now nine hours later and there's no sign. No response to a text either."

"Well, if he is off walking on the moor somewhere, don't expect his phone to get a signal. He may not have received the texts."

John hadn't realised that until Mycroft said it, and he felt foolish. And then worried. "That means if he was in trouble, he'd not be able to phone for help."

"My brother rarely has the presence of mind to seek help, and, generally speaking, the more he needs it, the less likely it is that he will try."

John didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. The silence lengthened.

"This is the reason why I did not want Sherlock to take cases at the moment, Doctor. He is overreaching himself. Are you sure he isn't indulging in some forbidden substances? Sounds like a danger night more than a meltdown."

John laughed. "This is the middle of Dartmoor, Mycroft. He consumed a double scotch and then threw it up outside- I've seen the evidence. He's never been a drinker. As for anything harder, well, he didn't bring anything with him- not even a nicotine patch- yes, I checked. As for getting something here, well, the population of Grimpen village is less than forty and, according to the innkeeper, three quarters of those are retirees. I don't think it's a case of popping down to the nearest street corner cocaine dealer."

"Sounds rather…rural. Tell me more about this little mystery of yours and why it has taken you to this godforsaken backwater."

So, John did- as much as he understood of it. And when he'd finished recounting what he knew about Henry Knight's case, he realised that it sounded…lame, odd.

"So, my brother isn't sharing much at all with you these days."

John winced. "No need to rub it in, Mycroft. I'm more than aware that I don't understand what's going on." He drew a breath. "I called for advice about what to do in a post-meltdown period- because that's what I think I saw last night. What's the form? How long do I wait for him to reappear? And if he shows up, what's the best way of dealing with it? I assume you have some experience with this."

"It's been  _years_  since I've had to."

"And there's me assuming that your memory was as least as good as his." John was annoyed enough to let his sarcasm show.

"If he really is clean, then let him come to you. Don't expect an apology for a meltdown. Hell would freeze over first. If he is following old form, he will be…emotionally volatile for a while. Just ignore that, if he will let you. He might be needlessly provocative- as if overcompensating. It generally doesn't last all that long. And then he's back to normal- or, rather, what passes for normal with him." There was a brief pause. "He can have a cluster of meltdowns- that's rather tedious. If that shows signs of happening, then I want to know, Doctor Watson. You'll need reinforcements."

"Oh, God, Mycroft- one sign of you showing up and it would be guaranteed to push him over the edge. I don't know what you two are feuding about now, but it is really annoying. I swear that half of yesterday's assault on Baskerville was designed to tweak your nose; he was taking far too much pleasure at abusing your ID. Just this once, can you let him finish this case without having to fight you every step of the way?"

"Never fear- I wouldn't dream of interrupting your little holiday in the country. I have better things to do than to chase after a wayward brother."

John didn't have anything else to say except goodbye. And then he went back into the Inn and ordered what the menu described as 'a full English cooked breakfast'.

Gary the innkeeper was on waiter duty, and took the order.

"I don't suppose you could manage a sausage or couple of rashers of bacon?" The Cornish pasty from last night had not been enough, and John was hungry.

"Ah, no bacon; 'fraid not. This is a vegetarian establishment. I can manage quorn sausages, though. You really wouldn't know the difference."

John was certain he would. It made him remember the receipt he'd lifted off of the spike- from a butcher for a large quantity of meat. "Sure you don't have a secret supply in the back somewhere? Maybe for your own consumption?"

Gary laughed. "It's more than my life's worth. The other half won't have it in the kitchen; that's Billy's kingdom. I've learned to curb my carnivore instincts. The things we do for love."

Once he'd delivered the order to the kitchen the big man came back with a pot of coffee. As he filled John's cup, he asked "Did your friend get in okay last night? We usually lock up at 1 o'clock and give anyone who's going to be out later a key. But he left before I could give him one. I felt bad about that, so I took the risk and left the latch up on the front door. With all this nonsense about a rabid dog on the moor, I don't think a burglar's likely."

"I don't know; haven't seen him." John opened up the Western Morning News and buried his nose in it. He really wasn't in the mood for a chat. Fortunately, the man got the message and when he delivered the fried eggs, fried mushrooms, tomato, baked beans and granary brown toast, he didn't try to resume the conversation.

After breakfast, John went for a stroll. It was a sunny day, but there was a chilly breeze, so he kept his green jacket on. He came across a marked footpath, with a sign beside it and a crude map that seemed to indicate that the path went in the general direction of Henry Knight's house, so he took it. A half hour later, he recognised the house, and went up to ring the bell.

"Doctor Watson." Henry looked haggard and tired. He'd taken a while to answer the door, but John remembered it was a big house, so had been patient.

"Mister Knight. How are you feeling?" John wondered if the sedative had helped him sleep. By the look of it, perhaps not.

The young man sighed. "Awful. Didn't sleep at all well, despite that pill. I kept waking up because the outside security light kept coming on and then off. I think there are foxes at the bottom of the garden. Gave me the most terrible nightmare when I did finally drop off. I saw that bloody hound again in my dreams." He seemed to give himself a shake. "I'm forgetting my manners. Come in. I'll make you some coffee."

As John followed him into the kitchen, Henry kept talking. "I never got around to getting coffee earlier. Mister Holmes said he would make me some, but then he bolted before the kettle actually boiled. The mugs should still be here." He went over to the central island and rescued the two mugs.

"Sherlock was here? He  _made you coffee?_ He never makes coffee. When?" John tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.

Henry plodded over to the kitchen sink with the kettle to fill it with water. He glanced at the clock on the wall. "About ninety minutes ago. Came in full of energy, bounced about and then just…well, bounced out. I was a bit cross with him, actually. He wouldn't answer me, wouldn't explain why he lied about seeing the hound. Just asked me why I called it a  _hound_. When I couldn't explain it, he just left- without making the coffee."

The kettle clicked off, having reached boiling point. Henry looked so shattered that John stepped over and took it off the connection and carried it over to the mugs, filling them. "Do you take milk? I can't remember from yesterday."

Henry stirred off the stool and reached into the fridge. "Yes, a little. And sugar." His voice sounded flat, almost monotone. "You don't take sugar; Mister Holmes and I do. Is it because you're a doctor?"

John handed over the mug to Henry and pushed a teaspoon in his direction. Henry looked in the empty bowl, then wandered over to the cabinet. Then he looked surprised. "I'm sure I had a bag of sugar in there." He pulled a drawer out and picked out a little paper tube of brown sugar. "I prefer the white stuff, but keep some of this for guests. I don't suppose it really matters; it's just sugar." He stirred his coffee in a desultory manner.

John was worried by his lack of energy. "Henry, are you going to be alright? I am sorry about last night- I really shouldn't have let Sherlock talk you into going onto the moor at night. For someone experiencing flashbacks, it must have been horrible."

Henry looked down at his coffee. "I agreed to it- it's not anybody else's fault. I thought it might help. And, in one sense, it did, because I  _know_  he saw it too. He just doesn't want to admit it. That's my problem, no one believes me. I thought if Sherlock Holmes was willing to say he'd seen it, then I'm not crazy."

"Well, for what it's worth, Sherlock told me last night that he had seen the hound. He was pretty upset about it, too. I...found it hard to believe him, but then I didn't see it."

"I need to tell Doctor Mortimer that. She keeps trying to tell me I'm delusional. I keep telling her I'm not crazy."

John gave him a reassuring smile as he finished his coffee. "You're not  _crazy_ ; but you are exhausted. You need to try to get some rest. I've got to go now, but I don't really like leaving you on your own. Is there someone I can call? What about Doctor Mortimer?"

"She's due here later- I've booked the whole afternoon with her. I…need to talk to someone about this."

"She seems to be a good listener. I met her last night at the pub. I hope she can help."

"What are you going to do now, Doctor Watson?"

"I'm going to go try to find Sherlock. I wonder if he might need to talk to someone, too."


	8. Chapter 8

At the moment that John was leaving Henry's, Sherlock was back at the Cross Keys, muttering about slow wifi connections. He needed access to check two things- first, just who Doctor Frankland was and second, whether Doctor Stapleton's background qualified her for genetic manipulation of higher mammals- of the canine variety. What little he could glean was enlightening. Next time they met, he'd be more prepared.

He decided to check into a certain Norwegian email system. After encryption and re-routing through enough overseas ISPs that his brother would not be able to trace him, he opened an inbox and scanned Lars Sigursson's incoming messages. He responded to one, and sent four others in rapid succession. He needed to keep building the man's reputation, and that needed attention every day.

The slow bandwidth was driving him up the wall with frustration. When he was timed out for the third time, he closed down the encryption routine, slammed the laptop closed and left it on the bed.

For the third time that morning, he wondered where John was. It was now almost noon. He'd found the phone messages when he got back from Henry's, and his phone finally acquired a signal. Grimpen obviously had some form of mobile antenna- probably the same as the pub's broadband- rather hit or miss. His reply had not been responded to- probably meant John was out walking on the moor somewhere. The innkeeper had said he'd seen him go out just after ten.

Sherlock was torn. On the one hand, he wanted desperately to talk to John about last night's revelation- that he'd been drugged- and that both he and Henry were most likely victims of the same drugging. He had the suspect bag of sugar; now he needed a way to analyse it. He found himself annoyed at the lack of facilities. Baker Street's chemistry kit would probably not have managed to isolate what it was that set them both off on their hallucinogenic trip; he really needed the equipment at Barts. And he needed to experiment, under controlled circumstances, to confirm what he suspected about the drug. He could still feel the aftershocks of the drug rattling around in his system. He felt on edge, uncomfortably anxious. It was affecting his judgement.  _Stick to the plan._

Whatever weakness the drug was inducing in him, he knew he couldn't talk to John the way he wanted to. He had to keep him at arms' length- all part of the preparation for the game about to begin with Moriarty. If John was annoyed with him- and he seemed to be when he walked off from the fireside confrontation- then that was probably another useful way to put more distance between them. There would come a point when for his own safety, John would need to stop working with him, or even move out of Baker Street. Why that distressed Sherlock bothered him.  _I can't afford to rely on anyone. This has to be done alone; no one can know, least of all John._  He dragged out of his Mind Palace his Mycroft avatar at his most irritating- "Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock." Let that be his mantra. He could leave no hostages to fortune; he would have to keep the doctor annoyed with him, fuelling his anger and frustration at not being told what was going on.

Sherlock sighed, and went off to find John. Time to rub him up the wrong way again.

oOo

He found him sitting on a bench in the churchyard. He decided to try to judge John's mood before committing too much. So, he came at the topic obliquely, asking him about the Morse code that he thought he had seen being flashed across the moor. He wasn't sure why, but that had an immediate effect of annoying the doctor even more. Sherlock realised that the doctor was waiting for something from him.

 _What do you want from me? An admission that I was drugged up to my eyes last night, and off my head?_  As if Sherlock would admit to that- or apologise for his behaviour. Social conventions were just…a waste of time.

Sherlock decided on another oblique angle, so he asked John about Louise Mortimer, and whether he'd had any luck with her. Uncomfortable with the reaction he got, he added a slightly snide comment about John's attempted chat up of the therapist. That fell flat, earning him a snappy retort about not being funny and that it would be better if he just "stuck to ice".

 _Why does that…hurt?_  It did, and that surprised Sherlock.  _Is this the drug talking?_ He couldn't afford to be sentimental. That said, he needed John to help out on this case. They were going to have to talk their way back into Baskerville somehow, so he could get access to the analysis equipment. Then John was suddenly marching off, stiff backed with anger.

 _Why is he angry with me?_ This was so not what he needed at the moment. The drug still seemed to be making him slow. He blurted out to John's retreating back: "No, wait. What happened last night…" He tried to explain, but John was being obtuse, and saying something about him being "scared"- the tone of voice on that word made Sherlock feel like he was ten years old again, facing an uncomprehending brother. He tried to shrug off the feeling, only to realise that John was walking away again. Sherlock knew then that he couldn't admit to John about being drugged; given what the doctor had been thinking back at Baker Street, it would be as good as an admission of guilt that he'd taken something. Somehow, he didn't think John would trust him. That annoyed Sherlock, who caught up with the doctor and grabbed his arm, pulling him around, explaining how he had been unable to trust his senses.  _Let him think it was a meltdown._

And then John was telling him he couldn't have actually seen a "kind of monster." When Sherlock admitted his confusion about both seeing it and not believing it, John just turned away and said something about having something to go on, and good luck with it, before walking away again.

For a split second, Sherlock realised that the distance between the two men was widening to a chasm. And he wasn't ready.  _Not yet; it's not necessary yet._  Without thinking, he knew he had to do something quickly.

"I meant what I said, John. I don't have friends. I just have one." It was a shameless play on the doctor's emotions. Yet, it was honestly said. Maybe that's what made John stop and look back at him. There was the briefest of nods, and a terse, "right." But, he didn't stop walking.

While Sherlock was floundering over what to do or say next, his Mind Palace took over.  _Oh!_ It was as if the software had been running in background mode all along, and suddenly popped up with something significant. He realised that once again, John's obscure ramblings had triggered something unexpected.

He shouted out his delight at the breakthrough, but John seemed to wilfully misunderstand.  _Doesn't matter._  Sherlock was just bouncing with energy, catching up to the doctor and then walking backwards to keep the man in focus, explaining why- the acronym- it resonated with something buried deep somewhere in his Mind Palace. He didn't know what the initials stood for, but he k _new_  the letters were more important than the word they made up. John said something about Sherlock not spoiling his saying "sorry". That didn't make sense-didn't he understand that regret was the last thing in Sherlock's mind at the moment?  _Sorry?_ He wasn't sorry at all- John had just demonstrated why he was so useful to Sherlock, didn't he understand that? Sherlock just let his delight spill out, writing out the letters with full stops to show John what he meant.

They were now standing outside the front of the inn. For the first time, John seemed intrigued and asked him what the letters might mean.

" _Absolutely_  no idea but ...," he drew to a halt as he spotted a familiar figure standing at the bar, talking to the innkeeper.  _What is Lestrade doing here?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: If you want to know how this felt from Greg's POV and what happened next, take a look at the latest Chapter of Got My Eye on You.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you, like me, wondered why on earth Mycroft would agree to Sherlock going back into Baskerville, here's my take on why. Oh, and what happened next, too.

As Sherlock walked away from the Cross Keys pub, he told John that they were heading back to Baskerville. The doctor was sceptical about whether the ID trick would work again, but Sherlock replied that they might not have to and pulled out his phone.

"Hello, brother dear. How are you?" He put all the insincerity he could into the request.

"What are you up to, Sherlock? What is going on?" Mycroft's tone was terse.

"Oh goody, I've interrupted a meeting. I do hope you've someone _really_ important in the room. I've discovered something interesting that suggests your grip on the secret military research agenda is not all that you'd like it to be."

There was a sigh on the other end. "And you've just decided to stick your nose in where it doesn't belong…again?"

Sherlock didn't even bother to deal with that comment. "I need 24 hours' access Baskerville - your ID will work again, so long as you don't blow the whistle."

"And what possible motive would I have for doing something so irrational?"

"Because the alternative will be a rather painfully embarrassing exposure of just how much has gone on without your knowledge. Can you _really_ afford a public demonstration of your limitations right now? Hmm?"

That barb must have struck home. A rather world-weary sigh was then followed by Mycroft's cagey reply, "As you seem to think this is a negotiation, what's in it for me?"

"In exchange for this _truce_ , I'll tell you more about…what you want to know about. Deal?" There was a silence. _Oh, that's got your interest, brother mine_.

"Deal." The phone call was terminated abruptly. Sherlock smirked. He did _so_ enjoy annoying Mycroft. As he stuffed the phone back into his pocket and got into the Landrover, he told John cheerily, "We're good to go."

But, the thin veneer of exaggerated geniality with both his brother and now John was designed to hide the fact that he was seething. _The fat bastard- sending Lestrade to spy on me._ The situation so enraged Sherlock that he'd just decided to take the next step. On the spur of the moment, he had seized the opportunity to drug John, who seemed complicit with the DI. _Mycroft has corrupted him, too._ For the first time in their relationship, Sherlock did not feel able to trust John. There was no way that Mycroft could have known about what happened on the moor last night, yet the DI had magically appeared. He deduced that John must have made a call.

And that changed things. Sherlock decided that rather than experiment on himself with the drug, as he had planned, he would try it out on an unsuspecting _normal_ person- John was the perfect test subject. Whatever qualms he might have had about subjecting the doctor to such an experiment, they went out of the window when he watched John and Lestrade trying to downplay the case as a simple ruse run by the innkeeper and his boyfriend. Sherlock knew what he'd seen last night; knew what Henry Knight believed he had seen too. It was linked to Baskerville- no matter what John Watson and 'Greg' Lestrade thought. And drugs were involved. He knew that John's "zero tolerance" attitude would make him jump to the wrong conclusion if Sherlock told him about his theory of being drugged. What better way to demonstrate that he wasn't succumbing to temptation than to let the doctor experience it himself? He wouldn't be able to argue then that it was Sherlock's problem. _Turnabout is fair play._

oOo

By the time they got to Baskerville, Sherlock had plotted it all out. Given his own delay between drinking coffee at Henry's and then going out onto the moor, he figured it would take about another half hour before the drug reached its full potency in John's blood system. Sherlock came up with a legitimate reason to split up, sending John to 'investigate' while he kept the commander 'otherwise occupied.' Once official cooperation was secured from Major Barrymore, he tracked John's movements by using the security card swipe records, and then spotted his opportunity. _Laboratory conditions, indeed._

Sherlock knew from personal experience that whatever the drug was, it had the effect of opening the person to suggestion. While waiting, he downloaded some appropriate audio clips- canine noises. Then John came into the lab, and he watched him cross the room and enter another smaller room to the side. As he locked the doors out of the lab beneath his control room, John re-entered the main room. Sherlock activated an arc lamp and turned on all of the lights, and set off an alarm to overload John's sensory system. Then he plunged the room into darkness with only the emergency lighting on. Fascinated, he watched as John's behaviour became increasingly erratic and stressed. Playing the canine noises- a growl, snarling and the sound of nails on a floor- over the PA system had the desired effect. The panicked phone call from John gave him the perfect opportunity to crank up the pressure and to give tangible shape to the doctor's growing terror. _You believe me now, don't you, John?_

When he went to rescue the doctor from the cage where the terrified man had locked himself in, Sherlock tested the degree to which suggestability was present. When he got John to agree that he had seen a huge hound with glowing red eyes, he'd done enough.

"I made up the bit about glowing. You saw what you expected to see because I told you. You have been drugged. We have all been drugged."

"Drugged?" John was still shaky, but was getting his emotions back under control.

 _Interesting._ Sherlock realised that the doctor's reaction was shorter-lived- maybe the dose had been lower? Or perhaps his own hypersensitivity made it more of an issue, setting off the equivalent of a melt-down in someone with neuro-atypical reactions? His reaction had been more traumatic- and Henry's even worse.

Sherlock got the doctor underway again, heading back to the lab where Doctor Stapleton was working. He needed to analyse the drug in the sugar.

Doctor Stapleton agreed to co-operate, once Sherlock made it clear that he knew about her mistake with the glow-in-the-dark rabbit ending up in her daughter's hutch. He was soon absorbed in his chemical analysis, only vaguely aware of what was going on between John and the geneticist in the background. The tone in her voice seemed concerned at one point. A quick glance aside from the microscope caught John looking rather spaced out. He filed that reaction- at least he wasn't experiencing hallucinations. And there appeared to be no nausea, either. _Too low a dose?_

The first four tests did not reveal what he expected. Growing increasingly exasperated, he started to hypothesise a chemical structure, to see if he could find what must be there in the sucrose mixture.

He could hear their conversation- something about a dolly and sheep. _God, how banal other people's conversations are._ It was annoying and broke his concentration. Not that he was making any progress- the principal ingredient was obviously sucrose- C12H22O11- a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose. The solubility was exactly as predicted for sugar- which made no sense. Sherlock expected the chemical signature to show some form of ergoline compound, possibly related to lysergic acid diethylamide. But the basic lab tests showed no sign of anything else in the sample. _Nothing but sugar._ Enraged, he threw the slide against the wall, where the glass shattered. He shouted his rage- "It's not there!"

"Jesus!"

John's stock startled reaction annoyed Sherlock even more. Frustrated, he repeated himself, "Nothing there! Doesn't make any sense."

The woman asked what he was expecting to find. Sherlock was already pacing with agitation and snarled out "a drug, of course. There has to be a drug. A hallucinogenic or a deliriant of some kind. There's no trace of anything in the sugar."

John did his parrot imitation- repeating what Sherlock said, only with a question at the end of it. That infuriated Sherlock even more. "The sugar, yes. It's a simple process of elimination. I saw the hound – saw it as my imagination expected me to see it: a genetically engineered monster. But I knew I couldn't believe the evidence of my own eyes, so there were seven possible reasons for it, the most possible being narcotics. Henry Knight – he saw it too but you didn't, John. You didn't see it. Now, we have eaten and drunk exactly the same things since we got to Grimpen apart from one thing: you don't take sugar in your coffee."

John was still slow on the uptake, so Sherlock explained more. "I took it from Henry's kitchen- his sugar." He stared at the microscope as if blaming it for failing him. "It's perfectly alright."

John tried to suggest that it wasn't a drug, but Sherlock told him there was no alternative- it had to be a drug. He just had to figure out how it got into their systems. Logic could sort this. He decided to filter out their talking, and then closed his eyes. There was something…he could feel that same prickle of precognition- the same reaction he'd had the very first time that Henry Knight had uttered those words at Baker Street about the 'gigantic hound'. It always came back to that word- or the initials. "There has to be something…something….ah, something buried deep." But, as he reached for it, he was distracted by the woman doctor's perfume. It annoyed him. "Get out." He pointed at her. "Get out. I need to go to my Mind Palace."

As the door shut behind them, he could breathe again without being distracted. And he started digging. This time it was Donovan's nasal whine that announced the forensic avatar's presence. "So what have you got, Freak?"

"Three words- Hound. Liberty. In."

"Not much to go on- two nouns and a preposition." The sarcastic comment stimulated four different directions- like a human compass, Anderson pointed down corridors.

Sherlock was irritated by the avatar."No, no, no- not words like that. Hound stands for something- so initials." One corridor went dark, and the lights went on behind him. Sherlock turned around and walked down it. He could hear Anderson's footsteps behind him.

"Is Liberty a noun?"

Sherlock considered the idea in various shapes and guises- and then rejected them. Looking down the corridor, there were no doors. He huffed in frustration. Three words, in relation to one another? He considered it as a three dimensional problem. Anderson's voice behind him said, "three dimensions? That means looking up." As Sherlock did, he saw a map on the ceiling – of America. And then the rapid fire of neurons lit up and he realised that Liberty was a place, a location, in Indiana, commonly abbreviated in addresses as IN. That's where the Hound was- where H.O.U.N.D, whatever that meant, would be located.

He came out of his Mind Palace and went looking for John. Sherlock now knew what he was looking for- and needed a computer to continue the search. For the first time in days, he felt like he was getting somewhere.


	10. Chapter 10

When Greg volunteered to check with the local police force for Sherlock, he had not realised that he as letting himself in for a bit of a challenge.

The local nick consisted of one man and his dog- literally.

The tiny “station” in Princetown was one room attached to the side of a cottage that had been converted into a tea room called The Old Police Station, on the corner of the B3357, a left hand turn off the main road from Plymouth. Ten miles away from Grimpen, the grey stone building looked rather grim under a scudding bank of low cloud, and had a big sign on the side entrance informing “customers” (Greg cringed at the word) that the office was only open one day a week, and only then in the afternoon between two and four PM. Helpfully, the sign advised that the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary maintained a full time police station in Tavistock and Okehampton, and gave phone numbers and website details.

But, as luck would have it, Lestrade turned up at the right time on the right afternoon, and Police Constable Malcolm Luscombe welcomed him in. The man was at the end of his career- probably in his early sixties, but still reasonably fit, even if it was under a balding head fringed with grey hair. The black Labrador lying beside the one desk and one chair thumped its tail in greeting, as he introduced himself as a Met Police Officer. At first, the local PC assumed that Greg had simply lost his way, and needed directions to Her Majesty’s Prison, Dartmoor.

“It’s just a quarter of a mile further on this road- you can’t miss it once you get out of Princetown; it’s the ugliest prison in the British Isles.” The West Country burr in his accent marked him as a local.

Greg shook his head. “I’m just in the area on holiday, and this is an unofficial visit.” He explained what he had uncovered at the Cross Keys Inn, the meat order at a vegetarian restaurant, the large dog, and the subsequent stories that had been spun about a mysterious hound running wild on the moor. The DI left out the fact that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were involved; he didn’t want their involvement to get the local force more ecited than necessary. He ended up by explaining that the pub owners had admitted it was their dog.

Luscombe sniggered. “Serves those two right- you’ve done a public service there, putting a little scare into them. Odd pair, those two; come down as grockles from London five years ago, and then decide they like it here, so they bought the old pub at Grimpen. At first, a lot of the locals were sceptical- a little too ‘metrosexual’ for their taste, if you catch my drift. But most of that’s gone now, replaced by grudging respect. The local folk are happy enough that they’ve managed to keep it open at a time when pubs are shutting almost everywhere else on Dartmoor. Used to be that the holiday trade would keep the pubs alive enough in the summer to survive the winters, but it’s not enough anymore. I blame the cheap airfares myself. I mean, who wants to come to the rainy southwest when they can fly to the coast of Spain for less than it costs to drive down here from Manchester?”

The older man clearly liked to talk, but Greg had some sympathy. Doing office hours like this once a week could be a pretty lonely business, with only the rare visitor to alleviate the boredom. Yet, let the force suggest the idea of closing the “station”, and every local resident would be up in arms about “cuts” and being left “unprotected.” Showing your face was all part of the job, it would seem, just as much in Devon as it was in London.

The PC looked thoughtful. “So, all this hoohah about a rabid wild beast is just a marketing ploy? Well, I’m glad it’s nothing worse; we have enough trouble with the locals fussing about the Baskerville camp. They grumble and complain on a regular basis to me.”

“What’s the problem there?”

“Just the usual stuff, suspicious ‘goings-on’ they call it. Lights on the moor at night, talk of secret experiments, ‘genetic mutations’ to create battlefield animals. The stories are not helped by the fact that the minefield that was laid during the last war was never cleared. Bloody cattle end up trampling down the barbed wire fence that’s supposed to keep them away. Never did know an animal able to read a sign that said _Keep Out_. Even Barnaby here isn’t that smart.”

The DI tried to imagine the consequences. “A bit messy?”

“You could say that. At least a couple of times a year, there’s explosions going off as some pony, heifer or sheep ends up in the minefield. Army always compensates the owners, but it doesn’t stop the rumours. It’s to be expected, I suppose. Not everyone has a chemical and biological weapons research centre as a neighbour. Even I wonder what the hell they get up to and whether it’s going to escape. Not helped by the camp commander, Major Barrymoore; he’s a bit of an arrogant prick who rubs up the residents a bit. I end up peacemaker more often than not.”

“So, that’s the job, is it? Local community liaison?”

Luscombe nodded, as the Labrador got up and put his head in the older man’s lap for a pet. “Yep, apart from the occasional theft of farm equipment, or the odd break-in to a holiday cottage, there’s not much going on here. Even the prison is quiet. Last time a prisoner escaped was 2003. There were only 43 crimes reported last year in the whole of the Tavistock and west Dartmoor region last year.”  He grinned- “Bet it’s a bit more exciting in London?”

Greg decided against telling him that he headed up one of the Met’s twenty one Murder Investigation Teams. He shrugged and said, “There were only 118 homicides last year, but if you count all reported crime, there were over 700,000 in the Metropolitan London area. It’s a big place.”

Looking down at his dog, Luscombe smiled. “Hear that, Barnaby? If I worked in London, there’d be no time for you and me to enjoy ourselves out on the moor.”

“You like the moor?” Greg was from the Midlands, and had spent all of his working life in London. The windswept landscape here felt rather bleak.

The PC looked up from his dog in surprise. “Of course I do. Lived here all my life; know the people- went to school with them, grew up with them- apart from the incomers. They’re a different lot.” He sniffed. “Second homers- buy up all the old cottages, drive up the prices so the locals have no where they can actually afford to live. Then come down here for a couple of weeks a year, leaving the places empty all the rest of the time. Scandalous, really.”

“Do you know Henry Knight?” John had briefly explained to Greg the origins of the case that had brought them to Dartmoor- enough for the DI to be angry that the pub owners’ stunt with the dog had caused a troubled man such distress.

“Well- I know _of_ him, sure- everyone round here knows the story of his father. I was in my last year of school at Tavistock at the time- went to Kelly College there, before deciding to go into the force. The story was big news when his father died. Well, I say died- but they never found a body, and there was just the word of the kid, another Henry, named after his father. Some people say the father just disappeared with a lover, abandoning the kid, who got out onto the moor and made up the story.”

Luscombe then seemed to remember something and snorted. “Conspiracy theorists said he died in an experiment at Baskerville that went wrong, and the army covered it up.” He shrugged. “In any case, the family home near Grimpen was rented out and the kid went off somewhere to stay with distant relatives.”

“He’s back now, and none the better for the dog being used as a marketing ploy. Apparently, he saw it last night, and it sent him into shock. He’s with his therapist now.” Lestrade consulted his notebook. “Mortimer- Louise Mortimer.”

Luscombe nodded. “That makes sense. She’s a local girl- used to be based in Tavistock, but then moved to London. So, she’s back, is she? Well, good luck to them both. It’s not right that someone with mental health issues should be a victim of the Cross Keys guys.”

“So, do you trust them when they say they’ve put the dog down?”  Lestrade hoped the answer would be yes, because that would let John and Sherlock close the case. “Gary said it had become too hard to control, and Billy said he’d taken in to the vet.”

Luscombe looked down at Barnaby. “Not sure I buy that. If the dog was vicious, then how are they going to get it under control enough to get it to a vet?  And I know for a fact those two don’t have a gun, so unless they poisoned the dog, how would they do it? They’re big softies, those two. And I couldn’t do it to Barnaby here, even if he went bonkers and started attacking people. If they had any feeling at all for the animal it would be hard. I swear I cried less when my wife passed away last year than I did when this one’s predecessor reached the end of his innings.”

The older man kept petting the dog’s head, and the otter-like broad tail swung in a slow rhythm of bliss. When the hand stopped, Barnaby nudged it, greedy for more. “There are only two vets this side of the moor- one in Tavistock and the other in Yelverton. I’ll give you their numbers if you want to call. I shouldn’t get involved, unless Henry knight wants to make a complaint against the two.”

The Luscombe started to nod. “I’ll bet you it’s still alive. If the dog’s still running loose out there it would explain the rash of sheep deaths in the past couple of months. Had a farmer report a kill near two days ago near Winsor just on the bank of the West Dart - something attacked and fed off the carcass. Shame that; it means I’m going to have to get my rifle out and try to do the job myself. I really don’t like having to kill it, but it’s not like some TV show- no tranquilizer darts out here. Dartmoor’s not the Serengeti.”

“Can’t you just phone around the farms and tell them to keep an eye out?”

Luscombe snorted. “That’s all I need - the farmers will try to do it themselves if they think a wild carnivore is out there. Not a good idea- getting them all riled up will make them trigger happy.  This isn’t a place with tidy little fields with fenced in animals- their livestock are on the moor, so if they go out there, they’re just as likely to end up shooting each other as the dog.”

Lestrade told him that Gary had said they’d kept it at an old abandoned mine shaft, which made the PC nod. “That’s probably at Whiteworks. Nobody’s lived there for at least a decade, but there are still a few buildings at the top of the mine shaft.” He sighed. “I’d better organise a proper police hunt tonight, given it’s gone nocturnal on us. I’ll get that last carcass off the Sherberton Farm and we can move it back to Winsor where the dog’s been spotted. Stake it out, in the hope of catching it. If he’s hungry, he’ll come back to it.”

Luscombe rubbed his chin. “I could do with some help, Detective Inspector. I assume you’ve had firearms training?”

“Yes, but I’ve no experience with a shotgun or rifle.”

“Then I’ll lend you my pistol.”

Lestrade decided that it was worth doing.  If he could clear up the dog mystery without getting either or both John and Sherlock in on it, then even better. He had not been comfortable with the tension that he’d picked up on between the two men. It wasn’t like John to make reference to Asperger’s within Sherlock’s earshot, and it wasn’t like Sherlock to be quite so hostile to Greg when he’d first seen him. Something was going on, and he decided that getting the two of them involved was probably not a good idea. “Okay, where and when?”

“It’s on the other side of Cherry Brook from Grimpen, but as you don’t know the area it’s not sensible for you to walk it on your own after dark. The moor is dangerous in the dark. I could pick you up at the Cross Key at 8 pm.”

“I’m minus my own car out here, and got the Cross Keys to get me a taxi here; any chance of a lift back there now?”

Luscombe consulted his watch. “Timing’s right; it’s just gone four, so I can knock off now and head home. I live in Hexworthy, so Grimpen’s on the way.”

Malcolm ran a Landrover- he opened the rear door and pointed Barnaby in. When the Lab didn’t move, the PC barked a command, “Up!” Reluctantly, the retriever complied.

Greg slid into the front passenger seat, which was covered in a waterproof plastic cover, as the PC explained. “Dog sits up here with me most times; he’ll sulk in the back for a while, until I drop you off.”

Despite the non-stop whine emerging from the rear compartment, Lesrade enjoyed the trip back to Grimpen. The sun had broken through the clouds and was lighting up the golden grass and patches of gorse and heather.

When he got out in the Cross Keys carpark, Malcolm opened the back door, and the dog shot out and into the front seat. “I’ll pick you up at eight then- okay?”

“Sounds good.” As he wandered into the front door, Greg wondered if they could rustle up a cream tea or something for an early supper. Apart from breakfast on the plane back from Spain, he’d not had a thing to eat; just the pint of beer before Sherlock and John had showed up. He could do with a shower- and maybe even a nap if he was going to be up late tramping around the moor in the dark.

oOo

Luscombe was right about the dark moor. When he picked up Lestrade at eight, the Landrover left the pool of light around the pub and was soon enveloped in a dark tunnel lit only by the car’s headlights. Occasionally, the car lights would pick out the reflection of an animal’s eyes. He swerved to miss a couple of sheep sleeping on the verge, and swore. Barnaby was on the back seat this time, and the swerve was accompanied by the sound of his claws trying to get purchase as he slid across the seat. None of that really mattered, because all three of the Landrover’s occupants were trying desperately to ignore the stench of what was in the back compartment.

Greg had visibly flinched when he opened the front passenger door to get in. “What the hell?”

Luscombe nodded: “Ripe dead sheep. It’s what the hound left and the farmer picked up. Not a bad idea to get ourselves covered in the scent- should mean he won’t be able to smell us when we return it to the scene of the crime.”

Trying to concentrate on anything but the smell, Greg asked a question as they left Grimpen. “Why did you bring your dog along?”

“He’s got the better nose. He’ll tell us when the hound is coming, way before we will be able to see it in the dark. If anything, the scent of another dog in the area will bring our prey in- it won’t want a competitor stealing its kill.”

The smell was enough to make Greg regret that he’d had a spicy curry for supper. No sign of either John or Sherlock; according to Gary, they’d been out since he’d last seen them at lunchtime. He wondered what they were getting up to. He’d tried his phone up in his room, but the signal was weak and there was no answer to his text. When he went downstairs to see if the signal was any stronger, Gary saw him. “Sorry, Detective Inspector…signal’s crap out here. The only commercial mast allowed inside the boundaries of Dartmoor National Park is at Princetown. It’s better at Hexworthy; they get to piggy back on Baskerville’s mast; the army put one up on Laughter Tor.”

“Laughter Tor?!” Greg was incredulous at the name.

“I kid you not. Real name, but apparently it’s a West Country thing- comes from _lough_ which means a pile. That info is courtesy of Fletcher, who gives the walking tours to visitors. It gives a great view of the camp; near Dewer’s Hollow, too.”

PC Luscombe’s voice cut across the memory. “Not long now. It’s only a half kilometre from here. And I was lucky to talk one of the Tavistock boys into coming out, too. He’s parked up at the turning.”

Moments later Greg spotted a police car on the grass beside a single track road off to the right of the main road. Luscombe rolled his window down to greeted a PC who got out. “Evening. This is Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade from the Met.  And this here is Police Constable Ewan Thomas, who’s always game for a bit of open moor work.” 

A young man leaned in to look across to where Greg was sitting. “How do, sir? Ready for a little hunt then?” He couldn’t have been more than twenty five and wore a broad grin under his woollen cap. Even in the summer, the moor was cool in the night breeze. Greg’s light beige jacket made him a little over-dressed but under-prepared compared to the young man’s camouflage gear.

The door behind Lestrade opened. “Budge over, Barnaby; there’s room for both us back here.”  Thomas was carrying a shotgun, which he leaned up against the back of Greg’s seat. “Jesus, Luscombe. How long ago did that sheep die?”

“Two nights ago- but in May, you know the sun’s going to do its work. Farmer had to keep it _as is_ , so the insurer could verify the claim.”

“Spare me the details, just hurry up so we can get it out of here!”

They bounced down the side road that was little more than a series of potholes held together by the occasional piece of tarmacadam. The road was so bad that Greg realised the squad car’s shock absorbers wouldn’t have lasted the journey, but the Landrover seemed to be coping. A tumble-down dry stone wall appeared in the headlights, and then they rattled across a cattle-grid.

“The hound would have found it easier to catch the sheep here- it’s an enclosed field between here and the Dart; the Sherburton Farm across the river keep it for spring grazing, when the sedge grasses on the rest of the moor are still too dry.”

Barely a hundred meters on, Luscombe pulled the car over. “Okay, Ewan- you and I get the honour of lugging the carcass into the middle of the field, while the Detective Inspector here gets to hold Barnaby’s lead. He’s not to be let off, please. Might just head home from here- it’s less than three miles as the crow flies- or the dog runs.”

A quarter of an hour later, the three men and a dog were in position. Hidden behind the stone wall, they were stationed less than fifty metres from the carcass. The prevailing breeze took the stench toward the east, fortunately. Luscombe had lined up his rifle on the stone wall, using a night scope to get a good view. Thomas’s shotgun was loaded, but the breech was broken across his arm. Greg felt conspicuous with Luscombe’s pistol, so he put it in his pocket. He’d loaded it, but kept the safety on. The older PC had a pair of powerful binoculars focused on the line of trees alongside the river.  “It’s likely to come from that direction; Whiteworks is in that direction.” They all settled down to wait- including Barnaby.

An hour later, Greg was beginning to really feel the cold through the thin jacket. His hands were half frozen.  And then his phone beeped- a totally incongruous sound in the circumstances. He grabbed it out of his pocket, and ducked below the stone wall.

“Hello?”

“Lestrade. Get to the Hollow. ... Dewer’s Hollow, now. And bring a gun.”

“Sherlock- what’s going on?” He kept his voice at little more than a whisper.

“Henry Knight’s got a gun and he’s headed there.” The call ended abruptly, leaving Greg looking at the bright blueish white screen in dismay. Sherlock had sounded really tense. He thought about it and made a decision.

“Luscombe, I need to leave you two here at the stake out. Can I have the keys to the squad car, Thomas? I need to get to Dewer’s Hollow in a hurry.”

This was delivered in the same tone of command that Lestrade used with his own team, and he hoped it would work.

But, Luscombe was obviously made of sterner stuff than his Met colleagues. “Why? What’s happened?”

“It’s Henry Knight; he’s just terrorised his therapist and is headed off onto the moor for some reason. You stay here and get that blasted dog. I’ll see what I can do to round Knight up. Can you tell me how to get to Dewers Hollow from here?”

Thomas handed over the keys. “It’s got sat nav. To be honest, we’d be lost without it. But even then it doesn’t know place names like the Hollow. So when you get the car onto the road, drive no more than another twenty metres east and then take a sharp left- it’s signposted to Bellever. You cross some moor, and then into some plantation woods. Keep counting the turns to your left.” He stopped for a second, as if thinking it through. “Take the third left; in the trees you won’t realise that you’re doubling back on yourself.  Keep going until the road does a series of three 90 degree bends. When the satnav says the road turns north again, stop there. Here- take this.”  He handed him a torch, “you’ll have to use it to find the path- it isn’t signposted. Good luck, sir.”  

“Happy hunting,” Greg offered. “I hope you put the wretched dog out of its misery.”  Then off he went, stumbling his way around the potholes and got to the car.

Despite the sat nav, he nearly missed the sharp turn left, almost back on itself, with a tiny sign. Taking his foot off the accelerator, he swung the wheel and pulled the handbrake up, which slew the car onto the smaller road. Greg grinned. He could get to like the lack of traffic out here compared with London.

Thomas’s instructions seemed to work, but he nearly missed the fact that the car had turned back north. Sat nav’s tendency to make you think the car you were driving was the centre of the universe meant that it was easy to miss the cardinal compass points. He drew up off the side of the road, and killed the engine. When he got out, he heard the sound of wind in the dense trees, and there was an owl somewhere. And then his eyes adjusted to the dark, and he both heard the ticking of hot metal as it cooled, and saw the Landrover parked further into the trees- he guessed it was either Sherlock and John’s or maybe Henry’s, so he started running down the path next to it, through the trees. Barely thirty metres on, he spotted moving torch beams, and then came to the edge of what he realised must be the hollow, saving himself just in time from pitching headlong off the top of it.

“Sherlock!”

Not waiting for an answer, Greg headed down the steep slope, his own torch light picking out the figures of three men below in the mist that had collected at the bottom.

He heard John say something to a young man he assumed was Henry Knight; the doctor was speaking in a soothing voice. And Greg saw him take a pistol from Henry’s fingers, as the young man spoke. As he slid down the slope, the DI breathed a sigh of relief.

“But we saw it- the hound. Last night. We s…we, we, we _did._ We saw…”

Sherlock cut him off just as Greg reached the three men. “Yeah, but there _was_ a dog, Henry, leaving footprints, scaring witnesses, but it was nothing more than an ordinary dog. We both saw it- saw it as our drugged minds wanted us to see it. Fear and stimulus; that’s how it works….but there never was any monster.”

Lestrade picked up on the word “us” and the “drugged” and started to worry about Sherlock. Mycroft’s comments about old habits came to mind, but he whatever thoughts he had about that vanished as a loud howl echoed through the woods.  Greg’s eyes flew to the top of the bank in front of them, and he spotted something moving in the undergrowth.

John warned quietly, “Sherlock,” as Henry started to mutter in a panic, “No, no, no, no, _NO!”_

Sherlock put out a hand to try to calm the man, calling out to him, as Henry sank to the ground yelling in terror. Greg did not take his torch off the edge of the Hollow, where the dark shape continued to move. The animal turned its face toward the light, and Greg picked out a set of glowing red eyes, just as the hound snarled viciously.

“Shit!”

Greg’s startled epithet was followed by John asking him whether he was seeing what John was seeing up there; the doctor’s torch was turned onto his face to catch Greg’s horrified expression- giving him the confirmation he needed.

“Right. _He’s_ not drugged, Sherlock, so what’s that? What is it?”

Greg could hear Sherlock breathing raggedly behind him. “ _All right_! It’s still here…but it’s just a _dog._ Henry, it’s nothing more than an ordinary dog!”

As if to contradict that voice of reason, the hound threw back its head and let out a long howl.

Greg stumbled back at the awful sound. It was bloody enormous! As the beast leapt down the slope toward them, he shouted, “Oh my God...” It stopped half way down and opened its jaws to reveal a set of huge teeth that no dog had ever had. As it stood above them snarling he couldn’t stop himself from crying out again, “Oh, Christ!”

Sherlock moved away from the other men, but Greg couldn’t move- he was riveted with fear.   
  
It was only when the consulting detective shouted “No!” that Lestrade’s frozen stance broke; there was something so shocked and fearful in Sherlock’s voice that Greg’s own concern over-rode his fear.  He looked back to see that Sherlock was grappling with another man, pulling off a gas mask, revealing a face Lestrade didn’t recognise. Then Sherlock cried out again, “It’s not you! _You’re not here!_ ”  He head-butted the taller man, who crumpled slightly. Sherlock grabbed the man’s jacket, but the stranger didn’t fight back, keeping his hand clamped over his mouth and nose.

Behind him, Greg heard the hound’s growling escalate in volume, but Sherlock then shouted, “The Fog!” and John shouting “What?” as his torch lit up the snarling hound above them.   
  
Greg focused on Sherlock as he started shouting, “It’s the fog! The drug: it’s in the fog! Aerosol dispersal – that’s what it said in those records. Project HOUND – it’s the fog! A chemical minefield!”

As the words sank in, Greg threw his arm up to cover his mouth, trying to avoid breathing the stuff in. Whatever the fog was, it seemed to be driving the dog ever closer to them, snarling menacingly.

The man that Sherlock had attacked was now gasping in fear along with the rest of them, and he shouted out, “For God’s sake, kill it! Kill it!”

Greg decided he’d had enough of that bloody hound. He pulled out Luscombe’s pistol from his pocket and fired three shots into the dark. The beast flinched, but Greg had no idea whether it had been hit or not. As it gathered itself to leap down on them, John Watson fired the weapon he had taken from Henry- and this time, the animal seemed to feel the bullets. It squealed in pain and then crashed to the ground.  The two of them watched, guns poised, in case it moved again.

Behind him, Greg heard Sherlock move to where Henry was, and demand that the young man look at the dead animal. Despite Henry digging in his heels and repeatedly saying no, the consulting detective was unmoved, and shoved the reluctant young man forward.

“Come on, _look_ at it.”

Lestrade wondered about the sanity of bullying a traumatised psychiatric patient into confronting his worst fear, but decided if John Watson wasn’t stopping Sherlock, then maybe the doctor had a different idea. As Sherlock’s torch shone over the collapsed animal, the DI could see that it was simply a large animal, and now quite still.

Greg kept trying to use his hand to filter out whatever Sherlock had thought was in the fog, wondering if it was responsible for the panic he had felt when the beast had appeared to be twice its size and something not of this world.

Henry stood over the hound, staring. And then he turned back to look at the man that Sherlock had stripped on the gas mask.  “It’s just… You _bastard”_ He threw himself at the older man, screaming with rage. He pushed the man down to the ground, yelling, “Twenty years! Twenty years of my life making no sense. Why didn’t you just kill me?!”

John and Greg pulled Henry off the fallen man, as Sherlock spoke from behind. “Because dead men get listened to. He needed to do more than kill you. He had to discredit every word you ever said about your father, and he had the means right at his feet – a chemical minefield; pressure pads in the ground dosing you up every time that you came back here.”

Greg watched Sherlock hold his arms out wide and spin a slow circle, looking at their surroundings with a grin on his face.

“Murder weapon and scene of the crime all at once.” 

He sounded seriously under the influence of the drug, but the terror that had been there was now gone, replaced with what could only be described as delight.

His coat billowing out behind him, Sherlock crowed with laughter, “Oh, this case! Henry, thank you! It’s been _brilliant_!”

Something in his tone worried Greg, but it annoyed John Watson, who called out in reproof- “Sherlock!”

He turned to look at the doctor. “What?”

John’s glare was matched by the ferocity of his one word, “ _Timing_!”

Sherlock’s face altered, delight replaced by confusion. “Not good?”

Henry had not stopped listening. And he answered Sherlock, saying “No, no- it’s…okay. It’s fine, because this means…” Knight turned towards the other man, whose identity Greg still didn’t know. Greg watched as John moved with Henry as Knight finished his sentence “…this means my dad was right.”

Behind Sherlock, Greg watched as the man on the ground started to get up. Henry tried to move towards him, but when John put a hand up on Knight’s shoulder, Greg matched it with one of his own. Henry was volatile, now tearfully accusing the man, “He found something out, didn’t he, and that’s why you killed him- because he was _right,_ and he found you right in the middle of an experiment.”

The taller man had managed to get to his feet, but before he could answer Henry, there was a snarl. All of the men spun to stare as the dog whined in pain but managed to get to its feet. Without a moment’s hesitation, John fired two more shots in quick succession, and the dog collapsed again.

Behind them, the man that Henry had accused of murdering his father took off, heading out the back of the hollow into the trees, pursued by Sherlock, who yelled “Frankland”- thereby answering the question that Greg had been asking himself since he’d first arrived on the scene- just who was this guy? Henry’s story made him realise that the bloke was a Baskerville scientist- and probably the person that Sherlock had been trying to track down all afternoon.

John’s instincts were to follow Sherlock, and that left Greg to keep Henry company as he pulled himself together and set off after the others.

Ahead of him, Greg could hear Sherlock calling out to Frankland, but Henry was lagging behind. Torn by his sense of duty to keep the man company and to tear off after Sherlock, Lestrade shouted at him to “Come on, keep running!”

Through the trees, Greg could see Sherlock and John’s torch lights bobbing ahead. A baritone shout carried back to him- “It’s no use, Frankland!”

Ahead, Greg could see the running figure break free of the trees, crossing a grassy area before a barbed wire fence. Frankland did not hesitate, but jumped over. His foot seemed to catch the wire and he fell; by the time he got up, the other four men had closed the gap, nearly reaching the edge of the trees. Frankland got up and then started to run forward a few yards, and then suddenly stopped moving. His back was turned to them, as the neared the edge of the forest.  The DI’s torch caught the warning sign on the fence in its beam, and he realised it was the minefield surrounding Baskerville.

Greg watched in horror as Frankland’s shoulders slumped, and then the night was ripped apart by a brilliant flash of light and an ear-splitting explosion.


	11. Chapter 11

The train journey home was even more silent than the one which had brought them to Dartmoor. Sherlock flopped into his seat, put in his earbuds and closed his eyes. John would not notice that the phone was not actually being used to play music. He just needed to shut everything out and to concentrate on what had happened.

Two, possibly three exposures to the drug over a twenty four hour period had rattled his sense of what was logical and what wasn't. How much of what he had done was based on his usual application of cold scientific logic, and how much driven by emotional overload and paranoia brought on by the drug? He couldn't be certain.

The first time with Henry he had already dissected- the effect on his anxiety levels, leading him to think he was in meltdown, then to the hallucinations in the back of the Landrover. The next morning he could feel the physical effects of coming down off the drug, and thought it was past him.

But had he also been exposed to the drug again in the Lab? John's entry into the small room off to the side- he had been in that room himself, when scouting the location to see if it would work for his experiment on John. If that is where the drug was being manufactured by Frankland, then he'd been exposed, too. The military police would be investigating the room- no doubt, Mycroft would keep an eye on what emerged. Of course, whether he would be bothered to tell Sherlock was a different matter. Whatever had set John off in the Lab, Sherlock deduced it was likely that he had also been exposed, albeit in a lower dose.

And then he got another significant dose in Dewers Hollow, along with the other three. They'd all shared the same suggestive hallucination- expecting a gigantic hound, their senses were fooled into mistaking a normal large dog for a genetically modified monster. It had taken seven shots to take it down, which then exposed the truth to all of them.

This time as the train rattled away from Plymouth, there was a third party with John and Sherlock. Across the train carriage aisle, Lestrade was tucking into a Danish pastry, along with his take-away coffee. He'd bought coffee for them as well. Even with his eyes closed, Sherlock could imagine the doctor sipping his as he read the latest Western Morning News. Sherlock let his grow cold beside him, not wanting to show any signs of life that might stimulate a desire to talk from any of his travelling companions.

Talking was the last thing on his mind. Despite the shared experience, the drug had affected each of them differently. For Henry Knight, traumatised by exposure as a child when his father was killed, the repetition was too much to bear, and had pushed him into suicidal thoughts. He'd taken the gun to Dewer's Hollow to kill himself, but Sherlock had been able to talk him out of it, and John had disarmed him. Yet, all the while they were ingesting the misty vapours of the drug. Knight had the most exposure- three at the Hollow, including the night before he'd arrived at Baker Street. When Frankland decided to commit suicide by walking into the minefield around Baskerville, the resulting explosion had stunned Henry badly.

Sherlock opened his eyes and looked across the table at the doctor. "Do you think Henry Knight will recover from this?" When he spoke, he knew that he was probably saying it too loudly- his hearing was still affected by the aftermath of the explosion. He hoped the inappropriate volume might be covered by the fact that the train made conversation at a normal level difficult.

Perhaps it was the novelty of Sherlock asking a question about the man, rather than just thinking  _client_  as some object. John looked surprised as he lowered the paper and connected with the grey green eyes now scrutinising his. "Doctor Mortimer thinks so. She's moved him to a private clinic for observation. I called her this morning- she thinks he will make a full recovery, but it will take time. Why do you ask?" He sounded a little wary of Sherlock's motives.

The consulting detective broke eye contact, and looked out the window at the passing scenery.  But he kept talking anyway. "The reports about the H.O.U.N.D. project said that exposure needed to be repeated a lot to get to the homicidal or suicidal ideation stage. But, while the drug is excreted quickly enough, the longer term psychological consequences are less predictable."

Out of his peripheral vision, Sherlock saw John look away. He knew exactly what the statement was hinting at, and he looked uncomfortable about the consulting detective's deductions. "I'm fine, if that's where this is going." John lifted the paper so he could escape forensic scrutiny. From behind the front page headlines, came a slightly barbed comment. "Anyway, you were exposed more than me." John turned the page and resumed reading.

Lestrade put his coffee cup down. "Now, children…don't argue. This sounds a bit like pots and kettles. Neither of you is exactly firing on all cylinders, are you?"

Sherlock huffed and put his ear buds back in, and closed his eyes. He wasn't satisfied by John's answer any more than Lestrade had been. The doctor's reaction to Franklin's death in the mine field had shocked both of them. The explosion came immediately on the heels of John's second exposure to the drug – twice in the space of two hours had taken a toll. While the doctor had been quite functional at the Hollow, being able to use his skills with a gun to take down the animal, when they chased Franklin to his death in the minefield, the explosion triggered old memories. He'd gone into a PTSD flashback, and had to be physically restrained in the woods by both Sherlock and Lestrade- to stop him from going over the barbed wire into the minefield. He kept shouting at them, "I have to go; he's been injured, he'll die if I don't help him." No amount of explaining that Frankland would have been killed instantly would calm him down. In the end, Lestrade had to use a pair of handcuffs on John, and then forcibly frogmarch him back to the Landrover. Sherlock had the task of escorting Henry; their client was still in a volatile state- but watching the man who murdered his father die had a cathartic effect, and he was calm enough, if still a little shell-shocked by the explosion.

Sherlock drove them back to the Cross Keys Inn, with Lestrade following in the squad car he’d borrowed from the local police force. When Doctor Mortimer showed up, Henry was taken into Plymouth. John refused to go with them, saying he was alright now. Lestrade had called the two officers staking out the dead sheep near Sherburton Farm to tell them that the hound was dead and to pick up Thomas’ car at the Cross Keys Pub. When they got to the pub, he would give them a full report of the incident, of Franklin’s death in the minefield.  

John looked pretty shattered. And Sherlock’s hearing was still affected, but his initial near deafness had now degenerated to just a persistent ringing in his ears.

When the two men went up to bed, Sherlock sat up in the chair and kept watch over John. He was worried about the after-effects of the flashback, but kept himself busy composing an email report to Mycroft. It would have to wait until Plymouth and better internet connection to take the encryption needed. Major Barrymoore wouldn’t be best pleased that one of his resident scientists had confessed to murder and unauthorised experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. But, he’d promised Mycroft that he would do what he could to keep him briefed in exchange for permission to abuse his entry card again. And keeping Mycroft sweet mattered at the moment, lest big brother start rocking the boat on the Sigursson Plan.

John's nightmares started about ninety minutes after he'd fallen asleep. And the doctor's shouts brought a concerned Lestrade across the hall to knock on their door.

"Sherlock, are you alright in there?"

Sherlock opened the door and went out into the hall. Very quietly, so as to not disturb the sleeper, he whispered, "John's having nightmares; it's all part of the PTSD. According to the info I can find, trying to wake him up might cause more damage than just letting him get through it." Sherlock's laptop was open- it and the small bedside lamp were the only two areas of illumination in the room.

The doctor was tossing and turning, muttering in his sleep. Sherlock started to turn back to the room.

Lestrade took hold of his arm, ignoring the flinch and pulled him back into the hallway, so they could talk without waking John.

"What about you?"

"What about me?" Sherlock was slightly offended by the question.

"Don't pull that with me. I heard you when you grabbed Doctor Frankland. Who did you think he was? You were terrified. I've never seen you lose control like that before. Not even when you've been high. The drug made you hallucinate- who was it?"

Sherlock shook his head. "You were exposed, too, Lestrade; you can hardly count what you think you might have seen as being real."

"Yeah- but I got there after you three- and I hadn't been exposed before. So, I'm least affected. I know what I saw. You wouldn't be  _afraid_  of some military researcher- you thought he was someone else. What I want to know is who the hell provokes that kind of reaction out of you?"

Just then John started shouting, "No, let me get to him; he'll die. Let me go!"

Sherlock used it as an excuse to go back into the bedroom, leaving Greg's question unanswered as he shut the door.  _What he doesn't know about Moriarty won't hurt him._ Sherlock's plans didn't involve a DI getting involved. He could hardly trust a Met police officer to be able to resist his brother's prying.  _Credere et nulli*_  had become his new motto.

As the train skirted the seafront at Dawlish, he mulled over the consequences of his being under the influence of the drug. The effects had pushed him into drugging John, which he did not think he would have done under normal circumstances. The paranoia that led him to think that his brother, the doctor and the DI were in some elaborate conspiracy clearly tipped him over into something that was a bit not good- even by his standards. Yet, perversely, it actually had a useful consequence, putting more distance between them. Under the influence of the drug, John had been slow to realise that it was Sherlock who had exposed him the first time, not catching on until the next morning. And now John’s embarrassment about the PTSD flashbacks both at the minefield and then at night kept his criticism in check. After all, Sherlock had not been responsible for the second, much larger dose at Dewers Hollow. And, in fact, as Sherlock pointed out, he'd been wrong- the sugar wasn't actually carrying the drug, so technically John was responsible for drugging himself when he went into the experimental room, despite its warning signs.

Oddly, it was the DI's reaction that worried him more. Sherlock had cut off Lestrade's questioning about his behaviour in the Hollow, but he thought it might get back to Mycroft anyway. He was not sure about whether the man's concern could be minimised, but he was reluctant to open the discussion, lest it get out of hand. Lestrade had seen him before under the influence of drugs, and might be willing to pass that information onto his brother- under the guise of "concern". Sherlock sighed.  _I don't need this now. I have to concentrate._

When they came into Exeter station, a large crowd of people got on- holidaymakers on their way home after a trip to Devon. Noise levels went up dramatically. Once the seats were occupied and the train left the station, Sherlock got up. John didn't look up from his newspaper. Lestrade tried to catch his eye, with an enquiring look, but Sherlock studiously ignored it, and moved off down the carriage. He needed something to help focus his thinking, and he hoped to find it.

Five carriages along, he did. A casually dressed young man of about twenty was standing in the corridor between train carriages. The door window was half way down and Sherlock smirked. "I don't suppose you have a spare that you'd be willing to give me?"

The young man frowned. "A spare what?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "One of what you are studiously hiding in your left hand behind your leg. The guard's down in the last carriage checking tickets- he'll take at least ten minutes to work his way up here, so I just have time for a cigarette."

The guy grimaced. "Busted- just don't tell the girlfriend, will you? She's trying to make me quit." He fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a half empty packet of cigarettes, handing Sherlock one. The taller man took it and then eyed him, expectantly. The youth sighed and reached into his other pocket and pulled out a disposable lighter and handed it over.

Sherlock lit the cigarette and took a deep drag all the way down into his lungs, closing his eyes in appreciation. He then leaned over past the youth, and pulled the window all the way down. "Unless your girlfriend's nose is too full of the perfume that I can smell on you, she'll pick up the scent of smoke. You need a gale through here to keep it from lingering on your clothes."

The young man laughed. "Sounds like someone's been pushing you to quit, too."

A nod was the only reaction he got. Then Sherlock simply shut his eyes and concentrated on smoking.  _I need to think._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Trust No One   
> This is the end of Hellish Hound. The Fallen Angel series will continue on Monday, with a new story- about a stolen masterpiece by Turner.


End file.
